The risk of miscarriage more than doubles for women who take anti-inflammatory drugs, some of which are available over-the-counter, during early pregnancy, according to a new study.

Researchers report that any type or dosage of non-aspirin, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can increase the risk of miscarriage up to 2.4 times. These drugs include naproxen, ibuprofen, diclofenac and celecoxib.

Canadian researchers looked at nearly 5000 cases of miscarriage, which included 352 women who took non-aspirin NSAIDs.

Compared to women who did not take NSAIDs during early pregnancy, the women who did take NSAIDs alone or in combination were 2.4 times more likely to spontaneously miscarry.

The highest risk was associated with diclofenac alone and the lowest risk was associated with rofecoxib alone. Dosage did not appear to affect risk.

Prior research has found that taking non-aspirin NSAIDs during pregnancy can increase the risk of major congenital deformations.

“Non-aspirin NSAIDs should be used with caution during pregnancy,” the study researchers recommended.

The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Voices can reveal a lot about a person, like age, gender or mood. However, new research challenges previous assertions that women’s voices can broadcast certain cues to men about how close they are to ovulation.

While prior studies have merely studied women’s voices in two phases: high conception risk vs. low conception risk, this latest study looked at the variation in women’s voices through their entire menstrual cycle.

The results indicated that women do speak with the highest tone just prior to ovulation (which some studies have associated with attractiveness); however, just after ovulation the tone raises again to levels indistinguible from pre-ovulation, making voice a very poor mating cue.

Furthermore, men involved in the study showed only a very slight preference for pre-ovulation voices compared to voices recorded during ovulation.

The study researchers therefore concluded that women’s voices do not provide reliable information about reproductive timing.

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE.

A Council of Europe committee has drafted a resolution that could keep parents from finding out the gender of their child before birth, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The committee speculates the resolution will prevent some parents from “selectively aborting” based on whether the child is a boy or a girl.

Gender can be determined through an ultrasound at 14 to 16 weeks. It is up to the government to decide when abortions can be performed, but most abortion laws allow procedures within that time frame, if not later.

However, parenting groups are questioning why the practice should be implemented in Europe, where selective abortion is not nearly as prevalent a problem as it is elsewhere.

Before any further discussion, I want to make it clear that this practice could not be implemented in America according to present medical laws. Any documented medical data done on a patient here immediately becomes the patient’s property.

As far as the resolution being applied in Europe, it could happen, but I definitely do not agree with it.

Certainly, cases exist where parents specifically want an ultrasound so they can consider sex selection, but the practice of withholding information from a patient chips away at the very foundation of a doctor-patient relationship.

Essentially, it violates the ethics we as doctors swear to uphold, which emphasize honesty and informed consent.

Not only that, but it can be vital for parents to know the sex of their child, because there are sex-related genetic illnesses that can run in families, such as Duchenne’s and Becker’s muscular dystrophies, which are passed from mother to son.

European legislators need to consider these matters carefully in deciding whether or not to implement any laws that will most likely damage the doctor-patient relationship and perhaps even cause excess stress for parents-to-be.

For the first time, scientists have identified the point in development at which infants appear to be able to differentiate between pain and basic touch.

British researchers report that infants can distinguish painful stimuli from general touch at 35 to 37 weeks of gestation, just before birth.

Because infants cannot report whether they feel pain or not, the researchers based their findings on recordings of brain activity by electroencepholograpy (EEG).

The EEG recordings, taken between 28 to 45 weeks of gestation, showed that infant brains began to produce distinct responses to pain – in the form of a clinically essential heel lance – and general touch around the time the pregnancy reached full-term at 37 weeks.

Due dates, in turn, are based on 40 weeks of pregnancy.

The results may have implications for the treatment, care and development of premature newborns, according to the researchers.

They also added that, interestingly, these children often grow up to be either more or less sensitive to pain than usual.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology.

Training infants to concentrate may improve future success in school, according to a new study.

British researchers report that teaching infants to concentrate may lead to improvements in other, unrelated tasks and help them learn better in academic settings.

The connection is an obvious one, according to study researcher Sam Wass of the University of London.

“The better a child is at concentrating on one object, such as a book, and ignoring distractions, for instance people moving around a room, the better that child is going to learn,” Wass explained. “[Additionally,] control abilities can be trained at a much earlier age than had previously been thought possible.”

In the study, the researchers successfully taught 11-month-old infants to direct their gaze towards images on a computer screen. For example, in one test, a butterfly flew on the screen for only as long as the babies kept their eyes on it while other distracting objects popped up as well.

Those infants showed rapid improvement in their ability to focus attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improved ability to spot patterns.

The fact that the babies’ improvements in concentration also led them to improve in a range of tasks supports the idea that infants’ brains have greater plasticity than adult brains.

“In other words, if we want to substantially alter cognitive development, it may be that the earlier we start, the better,” Wass said.

However, the researchers added, it may also be that infants “trainable” brains lose new found skills just as easily as they gain them.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology.

Could a father’s level of stress affect his unborn children? A new study suggests that there may be a relationship between a dad’s stress and his child’s risk of developing depression.

It has already been established in prior studies that the risk of developing depression is significantly increased by exposure to chronic stress, both from the the environment and from genetics.

While most studies to date have focused on maternal effects, the researchers in this case worked with male mice and found that those exposed to chronic stress pass along the stress behaviors to their offspring.

Both male and female offspring showed increased depression and anxiety-like behaviors, though the effects were stronger in males.

Additionally, these behavioral effects were only seen in offspring produced through natural reproduction, and not in those produced via in vitro fertilization. This suggests that most stress-related vulnerabilities are transmitted to children behaviorally.

These findings in mice raise the possibility that part of an individual’s risk for clinical depression or other stress-related disorders may be determined by his or her father’s life exposure to stress, a provocative suggestion that now requires direct study in humans,” said lead author Dr. Eric Nestler, from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

The study was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.