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LEAD EXPOSURE MAY RAISE BLOOD PRESSURE IN PREGNANCY Tue, Feb 8, 2011 (HealthDay News) In pregnant women, even small amounts of lead in the blood may cause significantly higher blood pressure, new research suggests. The study of 285 pregnant women found that about one in four had a lead level higher than about 1 microgram per deciliter (1 mcg/dL) of umbilical cord blood. That's significantly lower than the safety thresholds set by the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends taking action to reduce lead exposure when pregnant women or children have a blood lead level of 5 mcg/dL. Even so, women in the study with lead levels greater than 1 mcg/dL had higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings than those with lower lead levels. The average increase was 6.9 mm Hg and 4.4 mm Hg, respectively. Though further research is needed, the findings suggest that pregnant women may be as sensitive to lead toxicity as young children, said the researchers. Prolonged high blood pressure during pregnancy can lead to complications such as preeclampsia or eclampsia, potentially deadly seizures that also can increase a woman's future risk of heart attack. "We didn't expect to see effects at such low levels of lead exposure, but in fact we found a strong effect," Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, said in a university news release. The study did not find an association, however, between lead exposure and pregnancy-induced hypertension or preeclampsia. The study was published in the Feb. 3 online edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Lowering the limit on workplace exposure to lead may be a good starting point in protecting pregnant women, Goldman suggested. "The occupational standard right now is a level of 40 mcg/dL, and we see blood pressure changes at a level of 2 [mcg/dL]," she said. RESEARCH SHEDS LIGHT ON GENE LINKED TO PREECLAMPSIA Thu, Feb 17, 2011 (HealthDay News) Pregnant women who develop a serious condition known as preeclampsia have an overabundance of a gene that helps regulate the body's immune system, researchers have found. The findings may lead to improved screening and prenatal care for these patients and their babies, said the North Carolina State University researchers. Preeclampsia is a sudden rise in blood pressure that can result in stroke, seizures or organ failure in the mother. The condition occurs in up to 10 percent of pregnancies and is responsible for about 15 percent of preterm births. Recent research has focused on preeclampsia as an autoimmune disorder, in which the mother's body regards the placenta as an invader. In this new study, the researchers compared genetic analyses of placentas from women with preeclampsia and from women with normal pregnancies. "When we looked at the preeclampsic placentas, we found that several genes associated with a particular autoimmune pathway are 'upregulated' -- basically, that there were more of them in placentas of preeclampsic women than in normal placentas," study author and genomics professor Dr. Jorge Piedrahita said in university news release. "More specifically, we found the upregulation of a particular enzyme involved in sialic acid modification called SIAE. Sialic acid coats every cell in our body, making it possible for our immune system to distinguish 'self' from 'not-self.' If this process is disrupted, the body can end up attacking itself." Previous research has linked SIAE to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes. "Prior to this research, we knew that there was an autoimmune cascade effect with preeclampsia, but we didn't know where it originated. Now we know that disregulation of SIAE helps start the cascade. We've been able to fill in the blanks, and hopefully pregnant women and their babies will benefit as a result," Piedrahita said. The study is published in the February issue of the journal Placenta.

ULTRASOUND AS A MALE CONTRACEPTIVE? Mon, Jan 30, 2012 (HealthDay News) Ultrasound equipment used for physical therapy may have potential as a male contraceptive, according to a new animal study. Based on their findings with lab rats, the researchers said it's possible that the commercially available equipment could make men infertile by lowering their sperm counts. In conducting the study, researchers from the department of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine rotated high-frequency ultrasound around male rat testes, warming them to 37 degrees centigrade (about 98.6 degrees F). They found two 15-minute ultrasound sessions two days apart were most effective, resulting in a sperm count index of zero. The study is published Jan. 29 in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology. "Unlike humans, rats remain fertile even with extremely low sperm counts," said James Tsuruta of the UNC School of Medicine, in a journal news release. "However, our noninvasive ultrasound treatment reduced sperm reserves in rats far below levels normally seen in fertile men (95 percent of fertile men have more than 39 million sperm in their ejaculate)." Tsuruta said more research is needed to determine how long sperm counts would remain low and whether or not the ultrasound procedure is safe for more than one use. While studies involving animals can be useful, they frequently fail to produce similar results in humans. Mary Elizabeth Dallas BREASTFEEDING TIED TO STRONGER LUNGS, LESS ASTHMA Fri, Feb 3, 2012 (Reuters Health) Kids who were breastfed as babies may have better lung function, and a lower risk of asthma, than those who were formula-fed, two new reports suggest. Researchers said that past studies have found conflicting results when it comes to the effects of breastfeeding on kids' lungs, with some research suggesting that moms with asthma who breastfeed may be putting their kids at risk as well. But the new research hints that's not the case, and that babies with asthmatic moms may get just as much benefit from breastfeeding, if not more, compared to those with asthma-free mothers. "I think the evidence is that breastfeeding increases lung volume, independent of if the mother is asthmatic or not," said Dr. Wilfried Karmaus, who studies asthma at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and wasn't involved in the new work. "If the lung volume is increased, then you are less susceptible to get asthma," he told Reuters Health. "It's important even to tell asthmatic mothers to breastfeed their children." In one study, published Friday in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, about 1,500 UK kids were followed from their birth in the mid-1990s. Families responded to surveys related to breastfeeding as well as secondhand smoke exposures and other known asthma risks starting when kids were babies. At age eight to 14, the kids came into the lab for a range of lung function and allergy tests. Dr. Claudia Kuehni from the University of Bern, Switzerland and her colleagues found that the longer kids were breastfed, the better they performed on one test, measuring the speed of air coming out of the lungs. On two other tests, which also assess how much air the lungs can hold, breastfeeding for four months or longer was linked to better scores only in kids whose moms had asthma. The researchers reported that the better lung function did not seem to be related to a history of fewer childhood respiratory infections -- a known benefit of breastfeeding. Kuehni's team said that the lung boost attributed to breastfeeding might not make a difference for a healthy kid, but on a wider scale, it could mean that breastfeeding would protect more kids from breathing problems. One limitation of their study, the researchers noted, is that only about one-third of the kids they followed from birth and invited to do lung tests -- more than 4,000 in total -- actually participated, which could skew the results if certain types of kids were more likely to come in than others. In the other study, from New Zealand, a second group of researchers also followed babies from birth, but instead of testing lung function they asked parents of six-year-olds if their kids had ever been diagnosed with asthma or had used an inhaler or wheezed in the last year.

With data on more than 1,000 kids, including about 200 with asthma at their last visit, a team led by Karen Silvers found that each month of exclusive breastfeeding (without any formula mixed in) was tied to a nine-percent drop in asthma risk. Silvers, from the University of Otago in Christchurch, and her colleagues reported their findings Sunday in the Journal of Pediatrics. Karmaus said that researchers have questioned whether breast milk might carry immune cells related to allergies and asthma from mother to baby, putting infants of asthmatic moms at risk of breathing problems -- and that some concerned mothers with asthma may avoid breastfeeding as a result. But the new findings suggest they shouldn't worry, he said. He hypothesized that babies' suckling during breastfeeding may strengthen their lungs and help protect them against asthma later -- but that hasn't been proven. The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months of life, continued for two years or longer. Dr. Theresa Guilbert, a pediatric pulmonologist from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, said that despite the new findings, it's still "controversial" whether or not asthmatic moms pass on any risk to their babies by breastfeeding. None of the studies that have been done can prove cause-and-effect one way or the other, she said, and conflicting results might be due to different samples of moms, from areas with different diets and environmental exposures. "There's a lot of things that breastfeeding is very, very good for," Guilbert, who wasn't involved in the new research, told Reuters Health. "I think the jury's still out on the risk of breastfeeding from mothers that are asthmatic." But, she concluded, "I don't think any of that (evidence) is now strong enough to tell moms they should stop breastfeeding... because of all the other important benefits that breastfeeding conveys to the child." SOURCES: http://bit.ly/yCsmfY American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, online February 3, 2012 and http://bit.ly/wVKRCQ Journal of Pediatrics, online January 29, 2012. -- Genevra Pittman