Feature Channels: Women's Health

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Led by Cornell University nutritional scientist Rebecca Seguin, a new study of 93,000 postmenopausal American women found those with the highest amounts of sedentary time – defined as sitting and resting, excluding sleeping – died earlier than their most active peers. The association remained even when controlling for physical mobility and function, chronic disease status, demographic factors and overall fitness – meaning that even habitual exercisers are at risk if they have high amounts of idle time.

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Virtual reality, dance and fun are not the first things that come to mind when we think of treating urinary incontinence in senior women. However, these concepts were the foundations of a promising study .

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Research evidence shows that symptoms of postpartum depression decrease over time—but depression remains a long-term problem for 30 to 50 percent of affected women, according to a report in the January Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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As perceived by both patients and doctors, the cosmetic results after "lumpectomy" for breast cancer differ for African-American versus Caucasian women, suggests a pilot study in the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery—Global Open®, the official open-access medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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The symptoms of heart disease are often less obvious in women than in men, and as a result, some experts have recommended changing current medical practice and using separate criteria to identify the disease and predict its progression in women. However, new findings in the “Advancing Women’s Health” issue of Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC, suggest that sex-specific criteria do not improve the prognostic accuracy of blood tests for diagnosing heart disease.

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The new special “Advancing Women’s Health” issue of Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC, showcases nearly 50 studies that close the gap between men’s and women’s healthcare by shedding light on how heart disease, cancer, reproductive problems, and other common health issues manifest differently in women than in men at the molecular and genetic level.

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• Among women on chronic dialysis, sexual inactivity is common, with the most frequently described reasons being lack of interest in sex and lack of a partner. Rarely is sexual difficulty reported as a reason for lack of interest • Most women on chronic dialysis—including those lacking interest in sex—are satisfied with their sex lives.

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In two separate clinical trials, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that periodic meetings with a lactation consultant encourages women traditionally resistant to breastfeeding to do so, at least for a few months—long enough for mother and child to gain health benefits.

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A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Maryland School of Public Health found that while three out of four Americans were aware that Angelina Jolie had undergone a preventive double mastectomy, awareness of her story was not associated with an increased understanding of breast cancer risk. The study, published today in Genetics in Medicine, surveyed more than 2,500 adults nationwide three weeks after Jolie revealed in a New York Times op-ed that she had undergone the surgery because she carried a rare genetic mutation of the BRCA1 gene and had a family history of cancer.

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In a nationwide study of women with “triple-negative” breast cancer, adding the chemotherapy drug carboplatin or the angiogenesis inhibitor Avastin to standard chemotherapy drugs brought a sharp increase in the number of patients whose tumors shrank away completely, investigators will report at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

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Common breast cancer treatments target tumors by blocking or reducing the levels of estrogen in the body. These treatments may be rendered ineffective in patients with high cholesterol, where tumors can rely on the estrogen-mimicking molecule 27HC as an alternative fuel source.

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Pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant can make use of the holiday season to adjust their diets and reduce the risk of gestational diabetes, according to researchers at the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute.

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Women being treated with breast cancer drugs known as aromatase inhibitors can markedly ease the joint pain associated with the drugs by engaging in moderate daily exercise, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Yale University investigators report in a study to be presented during the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

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Research findings suggest there may be a simple way to reduce the risk of breast cancer by keeping cholesterol in check, either with statins or a healthy diet. Additionally, for women who have breast cancer and high cholesterol, taking statins may delay or prevent resistance to endocrine therapies such as tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors.

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A remarkable 98.7 percent of certain lower-risk breast cancer patients were cancer free for at least three years after taking a combination of the drugs Herceptin and Taxol, a study has found.

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In a new study, women with relatively small, HER2-positive breast tumors who received a combination of lower-intensity chemotherapy and a targeted therapy following surgery or radiation therapy were very unlikely to have the cancer recur within a few years of treatment, investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and other research centers will report at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

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Researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute have found that a byproduct of cholesterol functions like the hormone estrogen, fueling the growth and spread of the most common types of breast cancers.

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Exercise can benefit health and improve mood, and now new research shows that it has the potential to restore sexual desire and function in women adversely affected by sexual side effects related to antidepressant use.

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WASHINGTON DC, December 9, 2013 – New research pertaining to the latest findings on the effects of epilepsy on both the mother and child were presented at the American Epilepsy Society’s 67th Annual Meeting in Washington DC. These studies explore folic acid use, the effect of surgery with intractable focal epilepsy, and antiepileptic drug exposure during breastfeeding.

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A UAB study shows early maturing in adolescent girls can increase aggressive and delinquent behavior.