Baby’s sex, pregnancy issues
Scientists have found that the placentas of male or female babies control the level of small molecules which may explain the reason behind why pregnancy complications may vary depending upon the baby’s biological sex. The findings show that the genetic profile of the placentas of male and female babies were very different in relation to the baby’s sex. This may help explain why male babies may be more vulnerable to the effects of poor growth, and why being pregnant with a girl may lead to an increased risk of severe pre-eclampsia for the mother, the researchers said. “In pregnancy and childbirth, the sex of the baby is at the forefront of many parents’ minds, but we do not even think of the placenta as having a sex. This work shows that the placenta differs profoundly according to sex,” said lead author, Gordon Smith from NIHR Cambridge Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, Britain.
Diabetes and long work hours
Women who work for 45 hours or more a week may be associated with nearly 70 per cent increased risk of diabetes as compared to men or women who worked for 30 to 40 hours a week, a study has found. longer-working men however did not face this risk. While it is an observational study, the researchers noted, that the reason may be because women might work longer hours, when all the household chores and family responsibilities are taken into account, the researchers said. long working hours might also prompt a chronic stress response in the body, so increasing the risk of hormonal abnormalities and insulin resistance.
For the heart: stem cell therapy
Stem cells may potentially be used as a “one-and-done” approach to restore function in people with heart-failure, a study has found. Reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the study showed human stem cell treatment can possibly return the hearts’ functioning to better than 90 per cent of normal in macaque monkeys with heart attacks. Heart-failure that causes nearly 10 million deaths worldwide, is a condition caused by lack of blood flow. The stem cells will help “form new muscle that will integrate into heart so it may pump vigorously again,” said Charles “Chuck” Murry, Professor at the University of Washington. “Our findings show that human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes can re-muscularise infarcts in macaque monkey hearts and, in doing so, reduce scar size and restore a significant amount of heart function,” Murry said.