Bacteria offer insights into human decision making

Fascinating! Provides insight into why good communication skills are important with childbearing women and ensuring true, informed choice. Application of the learning from simple bacteria to the way medicine approaches maternity care could revolutionise the way women are provided with information and supported to make choices about what is right for them.

As the researchers note:

"We learned a simple rule: Anyone who needs to make a decision under pressure in life, especially if it is a possible death decision, will take its time. She or he will review the trends of change, will render all possible chances and risks, and only then react."

Bacteria offer insights into human decision making

Ovaries must suppress their inner male

"This shows that the maintenance of the ovarian phenotype is an active process throughout life," Treier said. "Like Yin and Yang, FOXL2 and SOX9 oppose each other's action to ensure together the establishment and maintenance of the different female and male supporting cell types respectively."

Further analysis showed that FOXL2 works in cooperation with the estrogen receptor to repress Sox9. Without FOXL2, the estrogen receptor fails to work suggesting that loss of estrogen levels could lead to sex reversal. Treier suspects that this mechanism might underlie the occasional signs of masculinization seen in menopausal women.

"When estrogen declines [in menopause], part of the ovary may switch to a testicle-like structure," he said."

Ovaries must suppress their inner male

Same hormone evokes both love and envy, study finds | Science and Environment | Jerusalem Post

"With a reputation as the “love hormone,” oxytocin has been linked to trust, empathy and generosity. But new research suggests that oxytocin plays a role in jealousy and gloating as well. “Subsequent to these findings, we assume that the hormone is an overall trigger for social sentiments: When the person’s association is positive, oxytocin bolsters pro-social behaviors; when the association is negative, the hormone increases negative sentiments,” Israeli researcher Simone Shamay-Tsoory, of the University of Haifa, said in a news release from the university".


Same hormone evokes both love and envy, study finds | Science and Environment | Jerusalem Post

Study links genetic variation to individual empathy, stress levels

Researchers have discovered a genetic variation that may contribute to how empathetic a human is, and how that person reacts to stress. In the first study of its kind, a variation in the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin's receptor was linked to a person's ability to infer the mental state of others.

Hmmmmm, can't help but wonder what sort of birth and early upbringing the folks with the gene variation had. The environment has a huge impact on which genes get switched on which ones get switched off. How the genes get tinkered with and altered too depends upon the environment. Epigenetics is the field of science exploring genetic behaviour in response to environmental cues. The issue of the early environment on the person's oxytocin's receptor variation would be good study.

Study links genetic variation to individual empathy, stress levels

Early life stress has effects at the molecular level

More evidence of the need to keep mothers and newborn babies together and ensure skin to skin uninterrupted time at birth. Maternity service providers, midwives and doctors take note

Early life stress has effects at the molecular level

Why immune cells count in early pregnancy

"This research identifies immune system cells as critical determinants of normal ovarian activity and the maintenance of early pregnancy. This might be a key to helping prevent early pregnancy loss, such as recurrent miscarriage."

Ms Care says a number of factors - such as smoking, obesity, poor nutrition and stress - could all alter the way macrophages behave and may provide reasons for infertility or miscarriage in some women.

Why immune cells count in early pregnancy

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Bioethics for clinicians: 12. Ethical dilemmas that arise in the care of pregnant women: rethinking

Bioethics for clinicians: 12. Ethical dilemmas that arise in the care of pregnant women: rethinking "maternal?fetal conflicts"

This article was written in 1997. The ideas about ethics that are expressed here need to be reaffirmed today. 

Review into male circumcision legality - Yahoo!7 News

Laws protect girls from genital surgery but parents wanting to circumcise boys can "go around willy-nilly chopping up bits of their sons", a state children's commissioner says.
Tasmania's commissioner for children Paul Mason and the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute have embarked on what they say is the largest review into the legalities of male circumcision in Australia's history.
Mr Mason said a critical issue for any non-therapeutic circumcision is whether parental consent is sufficient to protect a surgeon from legal action if the child's genital autonomy is thought to have been infringed.
"The only thing that protects a doctor from an action for assault or a civil prosecution is the valid consent of the patient," he said.
"The law is getting pretty hazy about whether a parent can give a valid consent for a child's non-medical procedure."
Mr Mason said about 90 per cent of Australian male babies were circumcised in the 1970s, dropping to about two per cent these days.
Its infrequency nowadays only heightens the chance of a circumcised boy feeling aggrieved as an adult that his rights were ignored as a child, he said.
But High Court rulings and United Nations conventions on the rights of parents and children and legal consent in terms of bodily integrity argue against parental-consent circumcision, he said.
Read more:

Review into male circumcision legality - Yahoo!7 News

Epigenetic modulation at birth – altered DNA-methylation in white blood cells after Caesarean section

Wiley InterScience :: Journal :: Article PDF

The report states:

"The stress of being born exceeds that of any other critical
life-event. It is fundamental for intact survival during the
transition from foetal to neonatal life. The massive sympathoadrenal
activation during labour (1) mobilizes fuel for the
hypoxic journey through the birth canal and triggers lungliquid
resorbtion (2), thereby facilitating air-breathing
immediately after birth. Labour also activates inflammatory
defence systems (3) and the central nervous system in such
way that the foetus is optimally prepared and adapted for
life outside the womb.
Timing and magnitude of birth stress are altered if delivery
is performed with CS. Infants delivered by elective CS
before onset of labour lack the catecholamine surge seen
after normal VD (1). As compared with normal birth, stress
in infants delivered by CS is also immediate rather than
gradually evolved as during labour. CS may therefore be
maladaptive for the newborn infant and has been associated
with increased short-term neonatal morbidity (4)."

Fish oil in pregnancy linked with reduced allergy risk fo children

A new study from Sweden published in the journal Acta Paediatrica [Acta Paediatr. 2009 Jun 1 ePub ahead of print] found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19489765 has found that Omega 3–rich fish oil supplementation during pregnancy and lactation may reduce the risk of food allergy and eczema in children.

The randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study, followed 145 pregnant women who had allergies or had partners or other children with allergies [which makes this group at high risk for having children with allergies.

From the 25th week of pregnancy until between 3 and 4 months breastfeeding, the women were randomly assigned to receive either:

1. daily fish oil supplements providing 1.6 g of eicosapentaenoic acid
(EPA)and 1.1 g of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)
2. or placebo.

Children born to the group of mothers who were given Omega 3's had a 2% incidence of allergy, compared to a 15% rate for the babies in the control/placebo group.

Another finding was that the incidence of allergic eczema was reduced by 2/3rds (8% in the omega-3 infant group, compared to 24% in the placebo group).

How this works is because Omega-3 fatty acids compete with the Omega-6s therefore lessening the release of arachidonic acid (AA) and inflammatory prostaglandins, which create havoc in our cells.

Another example of how important nutrition is and how nutrition must be the first line of primary health care!

'Seeing the baby': pleasures and dilemmas of ultrasound technologies for primiparous Australian women

'Seeing the baby': pleasures and dilemmas of ultrasound technologies for primiparous Australian women

An interesting report of a study into the pleasures and dilemmas associated with the way that ultrasound has become a part of the embodied experiences of pregnant women. The paper reminds us that women are increasingly taking responsibility for a successful outcome for their pregnancies in a gendered experience which has been socially constructed as inherently 'risky' in contemporary Australian society.

http://ogma.newcastle.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1913

My personal view is that women are under enormous pressure to produce the 'perfect' baby.

The tension that women feel as they wait to 'pass' the various tests, including ultrasound, has made pregnancy into an increasingly stress filled time.

The burgeoning list of 'tests' provide a series of challenges for women, the essence of which remind me of the trials and tribulations the heroes of ancient Greek and Roman mythology had to endure, to 'prove' they were capable and worthy of living. For childbearing women, the successful negotiation of the labyrinth or the attainment of the golden fleece means worthy for motherhood.