Conception in Biological News

Single thawed embryo transfer after PGD does not affect pregnancy rates

... Dr Yacoub Khalaf, director of the assisted conception unit at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, London ... pregnancy rates after various forms of assisted conception treatment. Given the increasing number of PGD ... in reproductive medicine and PGD at the assisted conception unit at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, said: ...

Children born after donor insemination should be told as soon as possible about their conception

... in heterosexual families were told about their conception after the age of 18, compared with none in the ... better for children to be told about their donor conception at an early age. This finding is in line with ... we recognise that telling offspring of their conception may evoke a sense of curiosity about their ...

Diet prior to pregnancy determines sheep's gender

... with polyunsaturated fats for one month prior to conception have a significantly higher chance of giving ... Roberts. Roberts explains how diet at the time of conception is the most important factor when it comes to ... of the diet consumed in the time period around conception that was responsible for this sex-ratio effect". ...

Report updates guidelines on how much weight women should gain during pregnancy

... how much weight women gain during pregnancy and their starting weight at conception can affect their health and that of their babies, says a new report from ... weight changes during pregnancy, but it also notes that women's weight at conception affects infants and mothers, too. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. women of ...

Low levels of vitamin B12 may increase risk for neural tube defects

... to women who have low blood levels of vitamin B12 shortly before and after conception may have an increased risk of a neural tube defect, according to an ... taking another nutrient, folic acid, during the weeks before and after conception can greatly reduce a woman's chances of having a child with a neural tube ...

Fat: Its not what you think!

... fatter. All of these statements seem to be counter to the popular conception of the relationship between fat consumption and health, a conception that Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University ...

Mom's obesity during conception phase may set the stage for offspring's obesity risk

... they do. The Study The study is entitled, "Maternal Obesity at conception Programs Obesity in the Offspring." It was conducted by the research team ... Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center, "The mother's body composition at conception has important implications for the metabolism and risk of obesity in the ...

Heat stress influences low conception of dairy herds

... A high maximum temperature on day 1 after insemination was found to reduce conception rate. Although it has been described that hyperthermia in lactating dairy ... As an overall conclusion, climate factors seem to be highly relevant for conception rate. The use of maximum temperatures gives more information that the one ...

Study explains potential failure of oral contraceptives with obese women

... indicated. Although conventional oral contraceptives appear to eventually reach the effective blood concentrations needed in the body to prevent conception in obese women, it appears to take twice as long, leaving a "window of opportunity" every month where the contraceptive may not be at a high enough ...

Will IVF work for a particular patient? The answer may be found in her blood

... peripheral (circulating) blood, an easily accessible biological sample. Blood samples were taken at eight different stages during the period around conception and the early stages of the IVF cycle. Five of these samples came from women who achieved clinical pregnancies, three from those who had implantation ...

ICSI or IVF: Babies born from frozen embryos do just as well

... puberty and their fertility status still remains to be assessed. Therefore, the continuous monitoring of children generated through artificial conception is of paramount importance," she concluded. ...

Can happiness be inherited?

... a child gets from its parents help shape that child's character." said Dr. Halabe Bucay. "My paper suggests a way that the parent's psychology before conception can actually affect the child's genes." "This is an intriguing idea" commented Dr. William Bains, Editor of Bioscience Hypotheses . "We wanted to ...

Immigrant women may be at higher risk of having a baby with a birth defect

... study, an analysis of 6,349 new mothers aged 18 to 45 years, examined the relationship between folic acid supplement use in the three months before conception and the mother's maternal country of birth and years of residence in Canada. Sixty one per cent of Canadian-born women in the study reported using ...

Engineering bouncing babies, 1 at a time

... evidence" to the IVF medical community. He is working on a computer simulation program on embryo transport in the uterus, in both natural conception or after IVF procedures, to model how and when artificially inseminated embryos should be implanted in the uterus. ...

Autism Speaks funds $5 million to studies on genetic and environmental risk factors for autism

... siblings of children with autism, who are at higher genetic risk for developing the disorder. Many of these infants will be followed from close to conception through early childhood. In a subset of high risk infants, detailed measures of brain development will be taken using state-of-the-art neuroimaging. ...

Miscarriage and infertility treatment increase pre-eclampsia risk

... became pregnant after hormone treatment to stimulate ovulation had a doubled risk of pre-eclampsia compared to women without treatment. Assisted conception treatment was not linked to an increased risk, even though hormone stimulation is part of the procedure. Different causes of infertility ...

Dolphin population stunted by fishing activities, Scripps/NOAA study finds

... calf survival rates and/or birth rates. This could be caused when fishing operations separate mothers from their suckling calves, interfere with the conception or gestation of calves or a combination of the two. "The link between fishing activity and reproductive output indicates that the fishery has ...

TVA fertilizer technology used worldwide -- but few new products since 1970s

... from process development and improvement. That's a benefit:cost ratio of more than $20 to $1. "TVA followed promising new fertilizers from conception to production to national acceptance by farmers and the fertilizer industry," Shields recalls. "Its program was based on fundamental research, ...

IVF does not increase risk of developmental disorders in children

... suggests that they are not at increased risk of cerebral palsy (CP) or other neurodevelopmental disorders compared with their peers born from natural conception in sub-fertile couples who were referred to the fertility clinic for fertility evaluation or treatment, she said. In the past, there has been ...

Should embryos with a hereditary disorder be transferred if no unaffected embryos are available?

... future child." He concluded: "However, professionals may still find it difficult to respond to such requests that lead not only to the deliberate conception of a child in need of special care, but also to the very outcome they set out to prevent when offering PGD to a couple. Is it acceptable to use PGD ...

Leading pediatrician addresses the future of children's health

... researchers the opportunity to change not only the direction of science, but also of medical care, by looking into more ways to prevent diseases from conception while understanding each persons individual genetic make up. There is also tremendous potential for drug discovery and small molecule alteration for ...

Evolving complexity out of 'junk DNA'

... - are the most anatomically and genetically complex of all organisms, but explaining how they achieved this complexity has vexed scientists since the conception of evolutionary theory. Alysha Heimberg of Dartmouth College and her colleagues showed that microRNAs, a class of tiny molecules only recently ...

New Argonne study may shed light on protein-drug interactions

... how proteins can reconfigure themselves in different environments. Proteins are not static, theyre dynamic, Makowski said. Part of the common conception of proteins as rigid bodies comes from the fact that we know huge amounts about protein structures but much less about how they move. For over a ...

In promiscuous antelopes, the 'battle of the sexes' gets flipped

... sex roles. Such role reversals may occur in species where females benefit from mating multiply, either because it increases their chances of conception with high-quality males or simply because it increases the probability that they conceive at all, Bro-Jrgensen added. He noted that this reversed ...

New evidence for female control in reproduction

... lot more control than previously thought, says Fazeli. This discovery profoundly influences our understanding of the physiology of events leading to conception and the bearing of offspring. ...

Scientists spy enzyme that makes us unique

... behind the formation of a persons DNA and how viruses replicate their DNA in the body, says Professor Phillips. In humans, this process starts at conception when maternal and paternal DNA strands join together at random points in their sequence(1). Enzymes such as T7 endonuclease 1 are then responsible ...

Researchers find evidence linking stress caused by the Sept. 11 disaster with low birth weights

... the disaster. The increase in very low birth weights (less than 1,500g) 33-36 weeks after September 11th suggests that exposure around the time of conception may also impact birth outcomes, although the exact mechanisms remain unknown. Prof Eskenazi concluded: We have thoroughly reviewed the literature ...

NIH awards UC $9 million grant to improve patient point-of-care technologies

... is needed, says Beyette. The NIH grant is intended to stimulate business in the community as well. The center will be structured to take ideas from conception to development of a prototype ready for clinical testing. Some of the factors that these new technologies will address include fast results in a ...

Drug could improve pregnancy outcomes in wider range of women with insulin resistance

... often share the same pregnancy complications as women with type 2 diabetes and obesity. Recent studies have shown that metformin not only aids conception in women with PCOS but also reduces the high miscarriage rates; however, how the drug does this has been unclear. Using early-stage mouse embryos, ...

Restoring sight, advances in fertility treatments and better visibility for pilots at FIO

... faster sperm from slower sperm. Faster sperm are more likely to successfully fertilize an egg, so the technique could improve the chances of conception via in vitro fertilization by ensuring that only the fastest, strongest sperm are used. The technique could find wide application in animal husbandry ...

Undergraduate research shows leaderless honeybee organizing

... the ‘worker piping’ signal on her. This interaction is a behavior that nobody had described before,” Schneider said. Contrary to the popular conception of a colony controlled by instructions from its breeding queen mother, the research shows a picture of the queen as a passive egg layer whose own ...

Researchers find gene mutation that causes infertility in male mice

... in meiosis, the process that produces sperm and egg cells for reproduction. These sex cells contain only one set of chromosomes that combine during conception and create an embryonic cell with two chromosome sets, one from each parent. The mutation leads to a change in an amino acid in Dmc1 that blocks ...

Dominant meerkats render rivals infertile

... and chases throughout this period, leading to dramatically increased levels of stress hormones and a collapse in fertility. This tactic reduces conception rates and increases abortion rates among the evicted subordinates, who are only allowed to return to the group after the dominant female has given ...

Polynesia explorers created worldwide web of scientific knowledge

... island peoples they wished to convert." Because of their continuous fieldwork, they claimed to be better informed than the scientists. In their conception of what it meant to know another culture, the missionaries "diminished the aesthetic and racial categories so important to the naturalists" and ...

Loosen leash on cancer protein 'watchdog,' researchers say

... of questions that would need to be answered before the research could translate into human therapy. "These mice were genetically modified at conception to produce higher p53 levels, which is quite a different treatment than just giving normal mice a pill," Mendrysa said. "Also, mice in our study are ...

Israeli scientists successfully transplant frozen-thawed ovaries in sheep

... in the control sheep it was within the normal range. The blood vessels were also intact. "Adhesions on the transplant might interfere with natural conception so pregnancy may require IVF techniques, but we have been able to demonstrate long-term intact organ cryopreservation with restored function ...

Mosquito study shows new, faster way West Nile can spread

... a single bite from a donor mosquito was sufficient to infect two out of 87 recipient mosquitoes. The discovery calls into question the current conception of mosquito transmission of West Nile virus and possibly other viruses such as the one that causes dengue fever. According to that theory, many ...

Human embryonic stem cells have the potential to develop into eggs and sperm in the laboratory

... we can investigate the action of these chemicals in the laboratory. "Ultimately it might be possible to produce sperm and eggs for use in assisted conception treatments. This is a long way off and we would have to prove it was safe because, for example, the culture process may cause genetic changes. For ...

Scripps research scientists identify infertility molecule

... older-than-traditional women at childbearing belies the difficulty that many women over the age of thirty have in getting pregnant. Successful conception depends on a variety of factors. A man has to produce an adequate amount of healthy sperm, and a woman has to produce healthy eggs. The sperm has to ...