Morning-after pill made little change
Washington Making emergency contraception available without a prescription in Britain did not lead women there to rely on it rather than other birth control methods or to an increase in unprotected sex, a new study has found.
The three-year study of more than 20,000 women found that over-the-counter availability had little real-world effect at all. Roughly the same percentage of women used it before and after it became more easily available in January 2001 – about 8 percent annually.
The researchers concluded that as a result, fears that non-prescription emergency contraception would change contraceptive practices for the worse were unfounded, as were hopes that it would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
The study was published on the online version of the British journal BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal).
The question of whether emergency contraception should be available without a prescription has become a hot-button political issue in the United States, with social conservatives arguing that it will encourage sexual promiscuity, and reproductive-rights advocates saying it will enable women to better protect themselves against unintended pregnancies.
Menopause symptoms recurring after therapy
Nearly two-thirds of women who use hormone supplements to control menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats and depression suffer a recurrence or a worsening of symptoms once they stop the therapy, according to a study published today.
But many of the 63 percent who had a recurrence were able to alleviate the symptoms with “lifestyle changes, such as drinking more fluids, starting or increasing exercise (and) practicing yoga,” said Dr. Jennifer Hays of Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, one of the study’s authors.
The results of the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, surprised the authors and might be disheartening to the estimated 2 million American women who pass through menopause each year.
“When we first started looking at the effects of hormone supplementation,” Hays said, “We had expected to see dramatic improvements in women’s health. We haven’t found them.”
In fact, for some women, the hormone replacement therapy might be doing more harm than good by triggering symptoms it was supposed to prevent – a kind of “second menopause,” Hays said.
Dr. Diana B. Petitti of Kaiser Permanente Southern California in Pasadena, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal, speculated that the recurring symptoms might have been caused by the abrupt cessation of treatment and that tapering off might allow women to avoid many problems.
Petitti said the study showed that, “We may have seriously overestimated the curative power of hormone therapy.”
Not all states checking infants for diseases
Infants born in the United States are not being consistently screened for 29 serious but treatable genetic disorders, according to a report released Tuesday by the March of Dimes.
The report found 23 states screening for 20 or more of the conditions, 12 states that tested for 10 to 20, and 15 states plus the District of Columbia that screened for less than 10. One state, Mississippi, screened for all 29 conditions.
Only eight states screen for cystic fibrosis, one of the most common genetic disorders in the United States.
California currently screens for only a handful of genetic disorders: phenylketonuria, hypothyroidism, galactosemia and a family of blood disorders that includes sickle cell disease. Beginning Aug. 1, it will test for as many as 40 diseases.
An advisory panel recommended to the Department of Health and Human Services in March that the core 29 tests be implemented nationwide.
Although there are many genetic disorders that could be screened for, the core 29 tests were selected by a panel of experts at the American College of Medical Genetics because there is a therapy for each one.