Radiation for Childhood Cancer Can Boost Risk of Stillbirth Later
Women who are childhood cancer survivors face a greater risk of having a stillborn child if their uterus or ovaries were exposed to radiation during their treatments, a new study finds.
Although neither boys nor girls who survived childhood cancer appear to suffer genetic damage that might affect their offspring, radiation damage to the uterus makes it as much as 12 times more likely that infants will be stillborn or die shortly after birth, the researchers said.
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Signs of Thyroid Trouble Tied to Raised Pregnancy Complication
The risk of placental separation during labor is three times higher than normal in pregnant women with antibodies that indicate early thyroid disease, a new study has found.
However, the findings don’t suggest that routinely screening pregnant women for thyroid problems or providing them with thyroid supplementation would offer any benefit, according to the researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
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Flu Vaccine Via Skin Patch Shows Promise in Mice
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get the flu vaccine through a stick-on skin patch instead of a shot?
Experiments in mice show that using skin patches containing tiny, painless “microneedles” to deliver the influenza vaccine may someday be a viable alternative to traditional shots.
The microneedles — less than 1 millimeter in length, or about half the thickness of a nickel turned on its side — dissolve into the skin and are small enough that they don’t draw blood or cause pain, researchers said.
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Many False-Positive HIV Test Results for Those in AIDS Vaccine Trials
Almost half of HIV-negative people who participate in clinical trials for HIV vaccines end up testing positive on routine HIV tests — even though they’re not actually infected, a new study shows.
The reason: They underwent what experts call “vaccine-induced seropositivity/reactivity” (VISP), meaning that they possess immune system antibodies to the virus but not the virus itself. That’s an important distinction, since routine HIV screening looks for virus antibodies only.
Experts pointed out that the results are not new or surprising, but simply underline the delicacies of conducting trials into HIV/AIDS.
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