Aurora magazine

The new pregnant obesity guidelines of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG) invite to use a multidisciplinary approach. Doctors should invite expectant mothers to lose weight before conception and between pregnancies. In this way there would be an increase in the chances to conceive, with a reduction of risks for mothers and children.

In the United Kingdom, around 22% of pregnant women are obese, 28% are overweight and 47% are normal. Women in the first group are at risk of miscarriage, premature delivery, gestational diabetes and postpartum hemorrhage. Instead, their children are more prone to congenital abnormalities and become obese and diabetic themselves. For this reason it is essential that the British doctors sensitize the future mothers on the subject, inviting them to keep the weight under control.

The guidelines of the Care of Women with Obesity in Pregnancy contain several tips, including the following.

• Incentive weight loss before conception.
• Inform women with a body mass index above 30 on the risks of pregnancy obesity.
• Inform that weight loss increases the chances of having a natural birth, even after a first caesarean section.
• Address future obese mothers to nutritionists, who give them guidance to lose weight safely.

At the base of all these tips there must always be an empathic approach. The attending physician must encourage the future mother to change her lifestyle, without blaming her and always with sensitivity. In case of need, it is also good that addresses to professionals who help her to face any psychological difficulties.

Source: medscape.com

According to the team of Dr. Michelle Rose, prenatal screening against hepatitis C should be universal. Testing all women instead of only those at risk would be more efficient and even cheaper. To prove it there is a study of almost 20,000 pregnant women, conducted in several phases between 2014 and 2017.

Universal prenatal screening makes it possible to identify the disease in a shorter time, so as to deal with it earlier and more effectively. In addition, it is also cheaper than risk based screening. Although there is a higher cost immediately, it saves a lot of resources in the following years. Compared to the $ 2,905 extra spent during the study, $ 100,000 were saved in treatment due to late diagnosis.

Testing only women at risk leaves behind many patients who are positive for hepatitis C. The infection develops unchecked and it is possible for the woman to infect other people. All this could be avoided with controls on all pregnant women, independent of the extent of the risk. This way you could start many treatments before and even prevent contagion.

The study involved 19.453 women aged 13 to 52, all being treated at Norton Healthcare in Louisville. This area is in fact the epicenter of a tremendous opioid crisis, which also affects other aspects of common life. In the state of Kentucky, the rate of young women with hepatitis C is 10 times higher than in the rest of the United States. Not all would be considered "risk subjects", which prompted Dr. Rose to offer the prenatal screening test to all pregnant women.

Source: medpagetoday.com

In the middle of the world, people are no longer making children. The Lancet magazine published a new report on global fertility between 1950 and 2017. According to research, people around the world are making fewer children than in the past. This could have a catastrophic impact on the evolution of society.

In 1950, each woman gave birth to an average of 4.7 children throughout her life. In 2017, the average was 2.4 children per woman. The fertility rate has halved over the span of a century. This means that in half of the countries there are more elderly people than children, so the number of inhabitants is falling.

If the trend continues, in a few years there will be very few children and many people aged 65 and over. What's the problem? In this condition it will be almost impossible to support the world economy, especially at the levels we are used to. It is therefore likely that there will be profound social and economic consequences. Society will have to adapt to a situation in which grandparents abound, but grandchildren are less and less.

In some respects, the collapse of the fertility rate is also a sign of progress. Less and less children are born, it is true, but those who reach adulthood are more and more. This is one of the reasons why women give birth less: most of their children overcome childhood and reach adulthood. Furthermore, in recent years we are witnessing a growing awareness of issues such as contraception.

Source: futurism.com

Rice University Gang Bao bioengineer has created a new genetic editing technology. To do this he combined magnetic nanoparticles with a virus coming from the moths. The technique could help fight diseases such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia.

Magnetic fields are easy to manipulate and pass through the tissues. Dr. Bao has therefore decided to use them to control the expression of viral loads in specific tissues. The technique allows in fact to activate viruses that otherwise would remain inactive in the blood, making the therapy less effective. In this way, instead, more viruses manage to reach the target and modify more cells with the correct version of the gene.

CRISPR / Cas9 has the potential to fight most genetic diseases. There are two problems: possible side effects; be able to change as many cells as possible. So we need a way to get a good slice of the virus in the tissues of interest, but the spatial control within the body is a challenge. Even if viruses are injected locally, there is always the possibility that they will displace and dispense the therapy.

Dr. Bao's team started with a moth-like virus, cylindrical in shape and large enough to carry 80,000 strands of DNA. Enough to change the genetic code of multiple cells. Scientists have combined the virus with magnetic nanoparticles, which can make the virus pass through the walls of the blood vessels. In this way they managed to get the changes only where needed, increasing the efficiency of CRISPR / Cas9.

Source: news. rice. edu