Category: Genetics & Birth Defects
UW Medicine to “affiliate” with PeaceHealth – Seattle Times
And Seattle Times staff columnist Danny Westneat questions the growing role of the Catholic church in healthcare in Washington state.
C-Section rates vary widely across nation
Overall rates of C-sections vary from about 7 percent — to 70 percent across the nation’s hospitals. Even among women with lower-risk pregnancies, where rates varied from 2.4 to 36.5 percent.
New prenatal blood tests raise hopes as well as questions
Insurers remain wary pending more studies, but many pregnant women are trying the tests for fetal abnormalities.
What you need to know about your kidneys, chronic kidney disease and its prevention
“When faced with a diagnosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD), people often and understandably feel overwhelmed because it can lead to end-stage renal failure requiring dialysis or a kidney transplant for the patient to survive,” says Valley Medical Center nephrologist Dr. Vilma Quijada. “But it’s very important to remember that there are ways to prevent the progression of CKD once an initial diagnosis has been made.”
Good Reads on the Web: From womb to tomb and other stories.
Long weekend reading: How long should we live? Surgery in the womb. And why are medical students learning the names of their cadavers? — and other best-of-the-web stories selected by KHN’s Shefali S. Kulkarni
More than one in ten U.S. babies born prematurely
U.S. has a higher rate of babies born too early than more than 125 other countries, including Rwanda, Uzbekistan, China and Latvia, according a new report produced by 50 organizations, including the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), an initiative of Seattle Children’s.
Seattle Children’s opens biobank for pregnancy research
The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbrith (GAPPS) repository will store specimens from pregnant women that researchers from around the world can use to study both normal and abnormal pregnancies.
How mothers-to-be can avoid toxins that affect fetal development.
Mothers-to-be can reduce the risk their children will be be harmed by environmental toxins by takings simple steps to avoid exposure to certain chemicals before they conceive and during their pregnancies.
Brain changes linked autism start early in life — UW study
Changes in the brains of children at high-risk for developing autism who later go on to develop the condition can be detected as early as six months of age, long before any signs of autistic behavior appear.
Weekend Reading: Interesting online health articles
Sarah Palin on special needs. When doctors treat their family members. The neurology of ethics. Not all memory loss is Alzheimer’s. And the politics of the Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy.
Strange organisms shed light on how living things evolve
Researchers at Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology have discovered how a group of organisms that thrive in places where conditions would kill most living things —such as hot springs, geysers, and salt ponds — rapidly adapt to changing conditions.
Top maternity hospitals in Massachusetts stop early elective deliveries
Early deliveries, from induced labor or C-sections, has been on the rise for more than a decade. One reason is that we’ve come to expect that babies born “a little bit early” will be fine. But babies born even a bit early are at risk for a variety of problems.
RNAi explained: Animation by Ballard’s Arkitek Studios
A video explaining RNA interference — or RNAi — from the journal Nature Reviews Genetics. The animation by Ballard-based Arkitek Studios.
Health on the Web: This week’s top picks
A drug that wakes the “near dead.” Romneycare and abortion. Low-birthweight affects adult cognitive abilities. Technology to connect doctors and caregivers. Trisomy 18 and Rick Santorum’s daughter.
Finding cures for rare diseases: Film and discussion, Dec. 13th
NWABR’s Community Conversation Series this month will include a showing of excerpts from the soon to be released film RARE, a documentary about the struggle to find new treatments for Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome (HPS), a rare genetic disorder.
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