Scientists have unveiled another benefit to waiting to have kids: Women who give birth after the age of 30 are less likely to develop endometrial cancer.

A new study out of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California examined 8,671 cases of endometrial cancer and 16,562 control subjects, and found women who give birth after 30 are 44% less likely to develop the disease than those who give birth before they turn 25.

While childbearing at an older age previously has been associated with a lower risk of endometrial cancer, the size of this study definitively shows that late age at last birth is a significant protective factor after taking into account other factors known to influence the disease -- body weight, number of kids and oral contraceptive use, Veronica Setiawan, lead investigator, said in a statement.

The study posits three possible theories to explain its findings:

- Women who can become pregnant at an older age may already possesses healthier endometriums.

- Exposure to the hormone progesterone during pregnancy may help fight off endometrial cancer during critical a period in the disease's development. Endometrial cancer tends to strike older women.

- Premalignant or malignant cells of the uterine cavity's mucosal lining, which are more common in older women, may be shed during childbirth.

"This study shows an important protective factor for endometrial cancer, and when the exact mechanism by which it protects women from getting the disease is known, it can help our understanding of how endometrial cancer develops and thus how to prevent it," Setiawan said.

Endometrial cancer forms in the tissue lining the uterus. It can be treated with surgery, though survival rates vary depending on how early it's diagnosed.

Source

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
Zita West's Guide to Getting Pregnant
by Zita West

-- A pioneer in the field of fertility, Zita West's programme is invaluable for couples trying to conceive.

Harley Street's most popular fertility expert, and favourite consultant to celebrity clients, guides the reader through a process of vital physical and mental preparation.

The book is for every couple trying to conceive and has fascinating advice taken from Zita's 20 years of experience as midwife and 7 years as an acupuncturist.

It provides a structured, easy-to-follow step-by-step programme, complete with case studies and and enormously detailed questionnaire.

The guide includes details on:
• when and how often to have sex
• what can prevent fertilization and conception
• everything you need to know about sperm and ovulation
• nutrition, supplements and herbs
• complementary therapies such as acupressure, lymphatic massage and hypnotherapy
• how to overcome stress and other emotional blocks to pregnancy
• PCOS, endometriosis and other health issues
• tests and procedures if there is a problem
• and much much more.

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New research in The FASEB Journal shows that diet induces epigenetic changes in female mice before pregnancy that are inherited by her pups

Everyone knows that what mom eats when pregnant makes a huge difference in the health of her child. Now, new research in mice suggests that what she ate before pregnancy might be important too. According to a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal, what a group of female mice ate—before pregnancy—chemically altered their DNA and these changes were passed to her offspring. These DNA alterations, called "epigenetic" changes, drastically affected the pups' metabolism of many essential fatty acids. These results could have a profound impact on future research for diabetes, obesity, cancer, and immune disorders.

"As parents, we have to understand better that our responsibilities to our children are not only of a social, economical, or educational nature, but that our own biological status can contribute to the fate of our children, and this effect can be long-lasting," said Mihai Niculescu, M.D., Ph.D., study author from Nutrition Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Chapel Hill, N.C. "My hope is that, along with many other scientists, we will reveal this tight biological relationship between us as parents, and our children, and how we can improve the lives of our children using our own biological machinery."

To make this discovery, Niculescu and colleagues split mouse females into two groups before gestation, and fed them either a control diet, or a diet deficient in alpha-linolenic acid or ALA. This was achieved by replacing the type of fats in the diet, while keeping the number of calories the same. The females were bred with mouse males kept on a control diet. Immediately after the moms delivered the pups, each of these two initial groups were further split in two, so that each half of the initial groups received a flaxseed oil supplemented diet (rich in ALA), while the other halves from each group remained on the same diet. Researchers used blood and liver to look at polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) levels and the DNA methylation of a gene called Fads2, which regulates PUFA metabolism. They found that in both the moms and pups, flaxseed oil induced a change in this chemical modification in the Fads2 gene.

Flaxseed oil supplementation increased the methylation of this gene, which, in turn, decreased the activation of the gene in pups. However, flaxseed oil was not the only factor with impact upon Fads2 methylation in pups. Results demonstrated that regardless of the flaxseed oil intake, there was a correlation between the methylation of this gene in moms and in their pups, which suggested that pups also inherit this methylation from their moms. The pups' ability to transform PUFAs in their own livers was influenced by both the mother's dietary intake, and also by maternal Fads2 methylation status.

"New York City may be laughed at by some for banning large, sugary sodas and for encouraging a healthy diet," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, "This report shows that future generations might not find that funny at all. This report adds to the large body of evidence that an inappropriate diet can produce changes in the function of our DNA and the DNA of our children—a process called epigenetics. As we begin understand the effects of diet on epigenetics, New York may go from being considered a funny 'nanny-state' to becoming appreciated as a public health visionary."

Abstract: Mihai D. Niculescu, Daniel S. Lupu, and Corneliu N. Craciunescu. Perinatal manipulation of α-linolenic acid intake induces epigenetic changes in maternal and offspring livers. FASEB J. doi:10.1096/fj.12-210724

Photo credit: Enjoy Your Meal, by Hindrik S, on Flickr
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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:

Before Your Pregnancy:
A 90-Day Guide for Couples on How to Prepare for a Healthy Conception
by Amy Ogle, Lisa Mazzullo, Mary D'Alton

-- Covering preconception and inter-conception (between-pregnancy) well-being for women and men, Amy Ogle and Lisa Mazzullo draw on new research from their complementary fields of expertise and reveal how good preconception health can lower the risk of pregnancy complications and improve lifelong health.

Why a ninety-day guide? It takes that long for sperm to mature, and at least that much time for the prospective mother to ensure that her body becomes pregnancy-ready.

In a warm, intelligent style, the authors address up-to-date topics such as age, heredity, vaccinations, supplements, and weight.

Paperback: 608 pages
Click to order/for more info: Before Your Pregnancy

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A “cocktail” of chemicals in bestselling lotions may pose a risk to a person’s health such as fertility problems, birth defects and even cancer, experts said.

Dangerous ingredients can also include hormone-disrupting compounds – which can harm babies – as well as carcinogens including formaldehyde and nitrosamines.

The increased use of fake-tan products can also have skin irritants and chemicals linked to allergies, diabetes, obesity and fertility problems.

Officials warned that its potentially dangerous effects were thought to be more worrying than for other cosmetics because it is applied over the whole body regularly.

The active ingredient in fake tanning products is dihydroxyacetone, which reacts with the amino acids on the skin to turn it brown.

Read more

Photo credit: PA - telegraph.co.uk
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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children
by Sylvia Hewlett

-- A survey, undertaken specially for this book, shows that 40% of women earning $50,000 or more a year are childless at age 45.

So why is the age-old business of having babies so very elusive for this generation of high-achieving women?

Why is it that all the new power and prestige does not translate into easier choices on the family front?

It seems that women can be astronauts, CEOs, Secretaries of State, but increasingly, they cannot be mothers.

Sylvia Hewlett's powerful book looks at the hard and disturbing facts and goes on to advocate a new way of approaching the question of motherhood vs. career for a new generation of women.

Paperback: 352 pages
Click to order/for more info: Creating a Life

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A New York Medical College physician who specializes in restoring or preserving fertility in female cancer patients has discovered a possible link between the presence of breast cancer genes and infertility.

In a paper published last week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kutluk Oktay, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology and principal investigator on the study, concluded that mutations in the BRCA1 gene, which have been linked with early onset breast cancer, are also associated with an early loss of egg reserves. This finding may help to explain why women who carry a mutated BRCA1 gene have greater rates of infertility as well as a greater risk for breast and ovarian cancer.

Read more...



Recent Keyword Searches: naturally pregnant after ivf, supplements to get pregnant, how to get pregnant after 40, is 45 too old for a woman to have a baby?, 40 and childless

A Belgian woman has given birth to the first baby born after an ovarian tissue transplant, a medical advance that gives hope to young cancer patients whose fertility may be damaged by chemotherapy.

The baby, a healthy girl named Tamara, was born at 7:05 p.m. on Thursday in a hospital in Brussels and weighed 8.2 lb. Her mother is Ouarda Touirat, 32, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6089202

For the first time, scientists have managed to grow mature human eggs from immature cells in the lab, a technique that may eventually help save the fertility of female cancer patients who aren’t eligible for traditional egg harvest.

Researchers from Northwestern University took immature egg cells, encased in a protective sac called a follicle, from 14 women who wanted to preserve their fertility before undergoing chemotherapy. By placing the cells in a unique three-dimensional growing environment for 30 days, the scientists coaxed the cells into becoming what appear to be healthy, functional human eggs.

“It is a major first,” said infertility expert Sherman Silber of St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis, who was not involved in the research. “No one has yet tested the eggs by in-vitro fertilization and pregnancy, but they look quite normal and we are all excited about it.”

Read more: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/humanegg/

The tiny translucent egg nestled in the special laboratory gel was a mere 30 days old, but its four-week birthday caused researchers to quietly celebrate. This was the first time anyone had successfully grown a woman's immature egg cells, contained in a tiny sac called a follicle, to a healthy and nearly mature egg in the laboratory. When an egg is fully mature, it is ready to be fertilized.

The researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have completed the first critical step in the development of a new technique, which, if successful in the next steps, may eventually provide a new fertility option for women whose cancer treatments destroy their ability to reproduce.

The nearly mature follicles grown for 30 days in the laboratory had been plucked from ovarian tissue of cancer patients before they began chemotherapy and radiation treatments that would destroy their fertility. The cancer patients, from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, had agreed to participate in the experimental fertility study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"By being able to take an immature ovarian follicle and grow it to produce a good quality egg, we're closer to that holy grail, which is to get an egg directly from ovarian tissue that can be fertilized for a cancer patient," said Teresa Woodruff, chief of fertility preservation at the Feinberg School and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

"This represents the basic science breakthrough necessary to better accomplish our goals of fertility preservation in cancer patients in the future," added Woodruff, who developed the new technique with colleagues.

Woodruff is the senior author of a paper on the findings in the July 14 issue of the journal Human Reproduction.

The next step will be for Northwestern researchers to try to induce the egg's final division, called meiosis, so it sheds half of its DNA in order to be fertilized. The ultimate goal is for scientists to be able to freeze the immature follicles, then thaw and mature them in a culture to the point where they are ready to be fertilized.

"This is a very significant achievement because the early stage of the human ovarian follicle is really hard to grow in vitro. They're very fragile and delicate," said Min Xu, a paper coauthor and research assistant professor at the Feinberg School.

As the immature egg grew inside the follicle, it produced hormones just as it would inside a woman's body.

"That's a good sign that these follicles are healthy. The actual egg also is growing to the same size that we would see in an egg that a woman's body has ovulated," said Susan Barrett, a coauthor and post-doctoral fellow at the Feinberg School.

Women currently have few good options to save their ability to reproduce after cancer treatment. Men are able to freeze their sperm for later use before they begin fertility-destroying cancer therapies. The best option to preserve the fertility of a female cancer patient is to collect her eggs, fertilize them with sperm and freeze the resulting embryos. However, this option is often not a practical choice because it can delay cancer treatment, can't be performed on those who have not reached puberty, and requires fertilization -- a problem for those who do not have a male partner or do not wish to use donor sperm.

Other researchers have experimented with freezing entire ovaries or strips of ovarian tissue and implanting them in a woman's body once she is ready to have children. But for cancer patients, it is possible that cancer cells may be present in the ovarian tissue and result in a new cancer after the tissue is implanted. However, if follicles could be removed from the tissue and grown in the laboratory successfully, as this study suggests, then a new fertility preservation technique might become available for women who could not safely have an ovarian transplant.

The new Northwestern findings build on earlier research by the scientists, who grew mouse follicles in a culture, induced the eggs they contained to mature, fertilized them with mouse sperm and implanted them into female mice to establish pregnancy. The technique produced healthy, fertile generations of mice.

Woodruff, working with Lonnie Shea, professor of chemical and biological engineering at McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, achieved the new advance by suspending the human ovarian follicle in two different kinds of three-dimensional gels. Previous attempts to grow ovarian follicles had been on a flat surface, which the researchers now believe does not replicate conditions inside the body. These earlier attempts failed to develop good quality eggs that were healthy enough for fertilization.

Woodruff said the research also is significant because it is the first time scientists have been able to isolate and study a functioning individual human ovarian follicle.

"Because you don't take an ovary out of young women, we've never before been able to look inside the follicle of the human and ask how does it work, how do hormones change, how does the estrogen change in the follicle?" explained Woodruff, who also is the Thomas J. Watkins Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "We never knew how an individual follicle regulated these hormones. This paper for the first time shows these individual hormones being regulated by one growing follicle."

The discovery, Woodruff said, will enable researchers to understand how nurse cells (granulosa cells), the cells that support and surround the maturing egg, communicate with the egg. "They provide a lot of information that the egg needs to grow and develop properly," Woodruff said. "It's a big priority for us to understand how the nurse cells talk to the egg." The information, she said, will help scientists understand how eggs grow and develop properly.

A new, two-step method of ovarian transplant has had excellent results, giving women a greater ability to conceive after cancer treatment or when older, doctors announced Monday.

The technique successfully and quickly restored ovarian function enabling two patients to become pregnant.

Scientists have performed ovarian transplants in women with cancer before, since chemotherapy often leaves them infertile. The ovaries are removed before the toxic treatment begins in order to re-implant them later.

Up to this point, cost and uncertainty yielded only a handful of successful transplants, but since women with diseases have limited options, they found it worth a shot.

Read more

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
Rewinding Your Biological Clock: Motherhood Late in Life
by Richard J. Paulson M.D., Judith Sachs

-- In 1996, Dr. Richard Paulson assisted a 63-year-old woman to conceive using in vitro fertilization with a donor egg, and she became the oldest woman in the world to give birth.

This incredible example of how assisted reproductive technologies, or ART, can change the course of nature, raises tough biological, emotional, and ethical issues.

Rewinding Your Biological Clock is a unique exploration of each of these issues, especially the "how-to" of peri- and post-menopausal pregnancy.

Written by a leading fertility specialist and a health educator, this original and daring book rethinks society's most fundamental beliefs about motherhood, aging and life itself.

Paperback: 356 pages
Click to order/for more info: Rewinding Your Biological Clock

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Picture by vierdrie
A new study adds to the growing literature suggesting that chemical exposure may affect male fertility.

Men exposed to higher levels of combustion by-products had an increased risk of infertility, according to results from a study conducted in China.

A decline in male fertility has been observed in recent years, and some scientists have proposed that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as PAHs, may be to blame. PAHs are a class of chemicals that are released in the atmosphere, soil and water as a result of the incomplete burning of a range of substances including coal, oil, gas, wood, refuse and other organic substances. These chemicals are classified as probable carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Researchers found that infertile males with abnormal semen quality (based on sperm concentration, number of sperm per sample, sperm motility and semen volume) had a 14 percent increase in median exposure to total PAHs relative to fertile men and slightly higher median PAH concentrations than infertile men with otherwise normal semen quality. Men with higher PAH exposure had a 53 percent increased risk of infertility than men with lower exposure.

The influence of the pollutants on infertility varied. Some PAHs had more of a risk of affecting the men's semen quality than others. Two in particular – called I-OHP (I-hydroxypyrene) and 2-OHF (2-hydroxyfluorene) – showed the strongest associations. I-OHP is one of highest measured PAHs in the US population and has been found in prior human and laboratory studies to affect semen quality at everyday exposure levels.

These results were obtained after researchers compared PAH residues in the urine of 513 infertile men with 273 fertile men.

It is however limited by the fact that exposure could not be directly determined. Instead, PAH residues in urine were measured, representing only a few days of exposure.

Source: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/exposure-to-pahs-may-affect-male-fertility

Picture from oncofertility.northwestern.edu
ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2009) — The powerful chemotherapy and radiation used to save cancer patients' lives can also destroy their fertility.

Research in a new field called oncofertility has advanced the ability of doctors to preserve the reproductive health of women, men and children who are diagnosed with cancer. Yet, many oncologists aren't familiar with these new strategies to help their patients.

Full story: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090226122728.htm