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Fertility Feast
If you need an even better reason than good health or svelte looks to cut out fats and sugar, eat veggies, get off your duff and exercise, consider this: eating right and physical activity can reduce the infertility risk of ovulatory disorders.
How that for motivation? Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health’s nutrition department carried out a study of 17,544 married women, scoring dietary and lifestyle according to a system the team devised.
Publishing their findings in the most recent issue of “Obstetrics and Gynecology,” the report noted that, "Women with the highest fertility ate less trans fat and sugar from carbohydrates, consumed more protein from vegetable than from animals, ate more fiber and iron, took more multi-vitamins, had a lower Body Mass Index (BMI) and exercised for longer periods."
Significantly, the relationship between a higher fertility-diet score and lesser risk for infertility was similar for different subgroups of women regardless of age or whether they had been pregnant in the past. And, researchers reported a sixfold difference in ovulatory infertility risk between women following five or more healthy diet and lifestyle habits and those who didn’t follow any.
"The right dietary choices and including the right amount of physical activity in daily life may make a large difference in probability of becoming fertile for women experiencing problems with ovulation," the Nutrition Department Chairman Walter Willet said in published reports.
Smoking Gun: Cigarettes and Baby Boys
While fertility savants know that smoking during pregnancy diminishes the future fertility of boys, a team of investigators has just figured out how. They found that the male fetuses of women who smoked 10 or more cigarettes per day had half the levels of a gene called DHH – which plays a key role in testicle development – compared t the fetuses of non-smokers.
The study, reported in the "Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism,” measured levels of 30 genes key to testicle development n 22 fetuses between 11 and 19 weeks of pregnancy. Of those 30 genes, only the DHH gene levels were significantly lower.
The DHH gene releases the DHH molecule that helps control normal testicle growth. The risk is that boys with diminished DHH will have small testicles, which are linked to low sperm counts.
Acknowledging that more study is needed, the lead researcher for the Aberdeen University team, Paul Fowler said, "This is the first time that the gene DHH, which plays a key role in the male's normal development, has been linked to maternal smoking and fertility problems.”
Abstinence-Only Sex Ed: The Funding Brawl Escalates
Citing “multiple scientific and ethical problems” in abstinece-only sex education programs, 10 leading public health researchers signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) urging Congress to reduce or completely cut federal funding.
The Washtington Times reported that the signatories included public health experts from Columbia University, The Guttmacher Institute, Indiana University, San Francisco State, The University of California-San Francisco and Yale University.
They jointly condemned abstinence only programs that withhold “potentially lifesaving information” about contraception. Moreover the 10 assert that the programs disregard the needs of gay, bisexual and transgender students.
“The thing that unites us is we think you have got to pay attention to the science," said John Santelli of Columbia University. "We want to see that the best programs are used" and that "they're based on science."
Fetal Legal Rights: A Texas Court Weighs In
It started with an appeal by a Texas man convicted of killing a woman and her 4-to-6 week old fetus. Terence Lawrence argued that because the fetus wasn’t viable, he should never have been prosecuted for its death.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed. In a unanimous ruling it upheld a 2003 state law declaring a fetus at any gestational age is an individual with legal protections, reported AP/Google. In its decision, the Criminal Appeals Court found the U.S. Supreme court has established that while the states do not have a compelling interest to interfere before a fetus is viable, it has “emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but ‘from the outset of pregnancy.” Thus, the court concluded, the Texas legislature is “free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings” without violating Roe V Wade.
From Skin Cell to Stem Cell: The Giant Leap, The Great Questions
A scant week and a half after researchers made their headline-shattering announcement that they could transform regular old skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells, the scientific and ethics communities are wrangling with the implications of the discovery.
Just to recap: Two teams of intrepid researchers – one in Japan, the other in Wisconsin-- independently succeeded in coercing the chromosomes in skin cells to behave like the much-coveted, can-become-any cell stem cell. The two groups hit upon the same technique of introducing four new genes into the skin cell that set off the reprogramming. Although there were differences in two of the four genes each team used, they all were master genes, i.e., genes that turn on and off other genes.
The researchers said their achievement was a first step, albeit an absolutely extraordinary one, in providing an unlimted supply of stem cells without having to destroy early-stage embryos – a process that ignited bitter ideological controversy.
Indeed, President George W. Bush has strictly limited federal funding for research to embryonic stem cells lines created before 2001, severely inhibiting research in this country, according to critics.
That made news of the skin-to-stem cell discovery a cause for jubilation in all camps. It holds the promise of opening the sluice gates to much needed research funding.
So far, the teams report that all testing they’ve done on the reprogrammed cells shows that they are the same as embryonic cells.
But the new York Times reported that the researchers caution that they still have to confirm that they really are the same and until then abandoning research with stem cells harvested from embryos would be premature.
Another issue, according to The Times, is that scientists use a retrovirus to insert the genes into the cell’s chromosomes and those viruses can sometimes cause mutations that can turn normal cells cancerous. Indeed, one gene that the Japanese scientists use is in fact a cancer gene.
Both teams believe this is a short-term drawback that will be overcome soon.
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