High Blood Pressure During Pregnancy. Part 2 of 3

Some of those women go into pregnancy with the condition, but many more disclose pregnancy-induced hypertension, which arises after the 20th week. Magee said the long-standing question has been whether doctors should try to “normalize” women’s blood pressure numbers – as they would with a resolute who wasn’t pregnant – or be less aggressive. The worry is that lowering a pregnant woman’s blood pressure too much could reduce blood flow to the placenta and impair fetal growth.

Some studies have found that to be a risk. But in this trial, the stage of blood pressure control did not affect a woman’s risk of pregnancy loss or having a baby who needed a stay in the newborn intensive keeping unit. The findings are based on nearly 1000 pregnant women from 16 different countries who had high blood pressure. Half were randomly assigned to “tight” blood pressure control, and half to “less tight”. High blood sway is defined as above 140/90 mm Hg.

For the tight-control group, the goal was to get that second number (the diastolic pressure) to 85 or lower; for the less-tight group, the end was 100 or lower, according to the study. Treatment involved regular blood pressure checks and, for most women, medication – with the dose adjusted when needed. Usually, women took a dope called labetalol, which is the blood pressure medication most commonly used during pregnancy.

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High Blood Pressure During Pregnancy. Part 1 of 3

High Blood Pressure During Pregnancy. When parturient women have high blood pressure, more-intensive treatment doesn’t seem to affect their babies, but it may lower the odds that moms will ripen severely high blood pressure. That’s the conclusion of a clinical trial reported in the Jan 29, 2015 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Experts were divided, however, on how to clear up the results. For one of the study’s authors, the choice is clear. Tighter blood pressure control, aiming to get women’s numbers “normalized,” is better, said the study’s prima donna researcher, Dr Laura Magee, of the Child and Family Research Institute and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

And “If less-tight control had no benefit for the baby, then how do you justify the endanger of severe (high blood pressure) in the mother?” said Magee. But current international guidelines on managing high blood pressure in pregnancy vary. And the advice from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is in accord with the “less-tight” approach, according to Dr James Martin, a past president of ACOG. To him, the new findings support that guidance.

So “Tighter blood to control doesn’t seem to make much difference,” said Martin, who recently retired as director of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. “This basically suggests we don’t have to alteration what we’re already doing”. High blood pressure, or hypertension, is the most common medical condition of pregnancy – affecting about 10 percent of pregnant women, according to Magee’s team.

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Healthy Eating While Pregnant. Part 3 of 3

Mothers provided braids samples during pregnancy to measure levels of prenatal mercury exposure. Mercury exposure did not correlate with lower test scores, the researchers concluded, and some of the Seychelles children now have been observed living healthy, well-adjusted lives into their 20s. The latest findings suggest that the oil in fish might counteract damage caused by mercury. Mercury ended up associated with developmental damage only in children whose mothers had peak levels of meat-related omega 6 fatty acids but low levels of omega 3s from fish oil, researchers found.

And “The theory is that mercury exposure confers toxicity because it induces oxidation in the humane body, which often results in inflammation. These omega 3s are more anti-inflammatory. The idea would be that they would reduce the level of inflammation in the mother, softening any effect that mercury might have on the unborn child”. Riley said in the women should continue to avoid fish known to have high levels of mercury, including shark, swordfish and king mackerel.

But, she said the takeaway dispatch from this study is simple: “Go ahead and eat fish”. Avoiding fish known to be high in mercury “would be reasonable. But I wouldn’t limit the amount of fish and shellfish”. The swot – funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the Seychelles government – was published Jan. 21 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

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Healthy Eating While Pregnant. Part 2 of 3

For example, current guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration recommends that pregnant women limit consumption of fish to twice a week. But in June, the FDA announced that it plans to update those recommendations and tell that pregnant women eat a minimum of two to three servings a week of fish known to be low in mercury. The FDA says these allow for shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock and catfish.

So “It’s not clear that the current recommendation of limiting your fish intake is actually warranted, based on the bruited about data,” said Dr Laura Riley, medical director of labor and delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “This study is again raising that same question. Is this categorically that bad? Do you need to take into consideration the beneficial effects of eating fish?” However, Riley isn’t convinced that fish oil might protect against mercury.

And “More cramming needs to be done before you can convince me that the fish is actually protective. I want to see the data”. The new study focused on the Seychelles, a cluster of islands east of Africa, where fish is a dietary staple. Researchers followed more than 1500 mothers and their children. At 20 months after birth, the children underwent a battery of tests designed to degree their communication, behavior and motor skills.

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Healthy Eating While Pregnant. Part 1 of 3

Healthy Eating While Pregnant. Despite concerns over mercury exposure, up the spout women who eat lots of fish may not harm their unborn children, a new study suggests. Three decades of enquiry in the Seychelles, the islands in the Indian Ocean, found no developmental problems in children born to women who consume ocean fish at a much higher rate than the average American woman, the chew over concluded. “They eat a lot of fish, historically about 12 fish meals a week, and their mercury exposure from fish is about 10 times higher than that of average Americans,” said muse about co-author Edwin van Wijngaarden, an associate professor in the University of Rochester’s department of Public Health Sciences in Rochester, NY “We have not found any association between these exposures to mercury and developmental outcomes”.

The omega 3 fatty acids found in fish lubricator may protect the brain from the potential toxic effects of mercury, the researchers suggested. They found mercury-related developmental problems only in the children of women who had bawdy omega 3 levels but high levels of omega 6 fatty acids, which are associated with meats and cooking oils. “The fish oil is tripping up the mercury. Somehow, they are interacting with each other.

We found benefits of omega 3s on phraseology development and communications skills”. The new findings come amid a reassessment regarding the risks and rewards of eating fish during pregnancy. High levels of mercury unmasking can cause developmental problems in children, the researchers noted. Because all ocean fish contain trace amounts of mercury, health experts for decades have advised in the club mothers to limit their fish consumption.

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Correlation Use Drugs For Heartburn And The Percentage Of Birth Defects Of Children. Part 3 of 3

A consanguineous journal editorial, written by Dr Allen A Mitchell, director of the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University School of Medicine, also noted some caveats. These included the reality that even this big of a sample may not have been large enough to detect specific birth defects (such as heart defects) or to ascertain the effect of specific drugs within the class. Nor can the influence of other factors be ruled out. Perhaps folic-acid supplementation during pregnancy is hiding the truthfully effects of the PPIs.

The bottom line, according to the experts, is that it’s still not clear whether these drugs are safe or not for pregnant women. “Having negative observations is never yes reassuring. All you can say is that within that range in this case, 800000 infants, the probability is that it is safe. The balance in pragmatic terms is how important is it to treat the symptoms that any drug is designed to treat versus the shelter of pregnancy. That’s a very difficult decision to make”.

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Correlation Use Drugs For Heartburn And The Percentage Of Birth Defects Of Children. Part 2 of 3

The authors of the redone study used linked databases to glean information on almost 841000 babies born in Denmark from 1996 through 2008, as well as on the babies’ mothers’ use of PPIs during pregnancy. PPI use by looking women was the highest between 2005 and 2008, when about 2 percent of fetuses were exposed, but exposure during the critical first trimester was less than 1 percent.

Babies were followed until they were one year old. The cut of babies with birth defects hovered at about 3 percent in both groups – 3,4 percent of those who had been exposed to a PPI in utero, and 2,6 percent for unexposed babies.

In an unexpected finding, there was a 39 percent increased jeopardize of major birth defects among children whose mothers had taken PPIs in the month before conception, a finding the authors are attributing to either unlooked-for or to another factor, perhaps the reason the mother was taking the medication in the first place. This could have been infection with Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria that causes most ulcers.

In addition to Prilosec, Prevacid and Nexium, the authors also looked at Aciphex (rabeprazole) and Protonix (pantoprazole). Prilosec was the only hallucinogen not associated with an increase in birth defects when taken during the month before conception, leading the editorial author to suggest this drug as a first line of treatment.

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Correlation Use Drugs For Heartburn And The Percentage Of Birth Defects Of Children. Part 1 of 3

Correlation Use Drugs For Heartburn And The Percentage Of Birth Defects Of Children. Babies born to women who took a fashionable form of heartburn drugs while they were pregnant did not appear to have any heightened risk of birth defects, a large Danish study finds. This class of drugs, known as proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), include blockbusters such as Prilosec (omeprazole), Prevacid (lansoprazole) and Nexium (esomeprazole). All were accessible by prescription-only during most of the study period (1996-2008), but Prilosec and Prevacid are now sold over-the-counter.

While the authors and an editorialist, publishing in the Nov 25, 2010 proclamation of the New England Journal of Medicine, called the results “reassuring,” experts still recommend using drugs as little as possible during pregnancy. “In general, these are probably strongbox but it takes a lot of time and a lot of exposures before you see some of the abnormalities that might exist,” explained Dr Eva Pressman, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “My recommendations are always to leave alone medication exposure if at all possible.

There are very few life-threatening disorders that require these PPIs. There are other ways to get the same effect,” added Pressman, who was not involved in the study. “Most pregnant women have heartburn but most of it is somewhat easy to treat with simple antacids such as Tums and Maalox and Mylanta, all of which are locally acting and absorbed, and don’t pose any risk to the fetus”.

Even propping yourself up so you’re in a semi-vertical position, as opposed to prevarication flat, can help, said Dr Michael Katz, senior vice president for research and global programs at the March of Dimes. The research was funded by the Danish Medical Research Council and the Lundbeck Foundation.

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