News by Subject Medicine & Health

Couples who eat more seafood tend to have sexual intercourse more often and get pregnant faster than other couples trying to conceive, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

New research that examined the impact of exposure to lead (in the air and topsoil) on fertility in the United States has found that exposure matters for both women and men. It is the first study to find causal evidence of the relationship between lead exposure and fertility rates in the 1980s and mid-2000s.

While the negative health impacts of pollution from coal- and oil-burning power plants are well-documented, UC Berkeley researchers tested the flip side: do birth outcomes improve following power plant shutdowns. They reviewed state data on preterm births and fertility around eight plants before and after they were retired in California and found 20-25 percent drops in preterm birthrates and an increase in fertility. This provides an argument for replacing such plants with renewable energy sources.

A new study reported elevated odds for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the grandchildren of users of diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen commonly known as DES prescribed between 1938 and 1971 to prevent pregnancy complications. This is the first study to provide evidence of the potential neurodevelopmental consequences of DES use across generations.

Most women feel empowered by elective procedures that enable them to bank eggs in case they can't conceive naturally later in life, researchers at UC San Francisco have found. But one in six become regretful, for reasons that researchers do not yet fully understand.

New research indicates that when pregnant women take certain rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drugs that may cause immunosuppression, their children do not have a marked excess risk of developing serious infections.

Among couples being treated for infertility, depression in the male partner was linked to lower pregnancy chances, while depression in the female partner was not found to influence the rate of live birth, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.The study, which appears in Fertility and Sterility, also linked a class of antidepressants known as non-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (non-SSRIs) to a higher risk of early pregnancy loss among females being treated for infertility.

A study of over 800 Australian and New Zealand women undergoing acupuncture treatment during their IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycle has confirmed no significant difference in live birth rates. The findings published today in JAMA support recent guidelines from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and two high-quality meta-analyses.