NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Taking common antidepressants during pregnancy doesn’t increase a woman’s risk of having a stillbirth, according to a new study of over one million Nordic women.
The drugs, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, include fluoxetine (marketed as Prozac) and citalopram (Celexa).
Earlier studies have tied SSRIs to a slightly higher rate of some kinds of birth defects and newborn lung problems. But whether the drugs also raise a woman’s chance of stillbirth – when the fetus dies in the uterus after at least 20 weeks of pregnancy – has been unclear.
“Studies previously have not really been large enough to answer this question,” said Dr. Olof Stephansson, the lead author of the new report from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
“From our study, we don’t find any reason to stop taking your medication, because untreated depression may be harmful for the pregnancy and the baby,” he told Reuters Health.
Stephansson and his colleagues consulted prescription drug registries and birth records from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, including more than 1.6 million births between 1996 and 2007. Just over 29,000 of the mothers, or close to two percent, had filled a prescription for an antidepressant during their pregnancy.
Overall, between three and four of every 1,000 births was a stillbirth, the research team reported this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In addition, about two of every 1,000 babies died within four weeks of being born and one in 1,000 died between one and 12 months of age.
Antidepressant use at any time during pregnancy was initially tied to a slightly higher risk of stillbirth. But when Stephansson and his colleagues took into account women’s general health, age and whether they smoked, any effect of the drugs disappeared.
Moms-to-be who were on SSRIs tended to be older and were more likely to smoke and have diabetes and high blood pressure than those who weren’t taking antidepressants, Stephansson said.
There was still a slightly higher chance of stillbirth among women who took the drugs very early in their pregnancies – the time when a fetus is thought to be most vulnerable to its mother’s medications and environmental exposures. But because less than 100 women fit into that category and had a stillbirth the finding “should be interpreted with caution,” the researchers said.
Blaming pregnancy complications on any specific drug is always a challenge, according to one researcher not involved in the new study.
“It’s difficult and under most circumstances impossible to separate the effects of SSRIs and depression itself or the lifestyle associated with depression,” said Dr. Richard Shelton, a psychiatrist who has studied antidepressant use in pregnancy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
For example, even when women’s general health and behavior are accounted for, they might not mention drinking and illegal drug use – which can be tied to both depression and pregnancy complications.
But so far, the evidence suggests the effects of antidepressant use during pregnancy are “pretty neutral,” Shelton told Reuters Health.
IF YOU NEED THEM, TAKE THEM: RESEARCHERS
Women who are taking antidepressants and planning a pregnancy should talk with both their obstetrician and psychiatrist to figure out what will be safest for them and their baby, Stephansson said.
But the bottom line, he added, is that “you should stick to the lowest dose possible and not stop with the medication if you need it.”
“The general recommendation is if a woman can be off an antidepressant medication during pregnancy, that’s probably a good idea. I think that’s probably a good idea for any kind of medication,” said Shelton, because all drugs may have small, unknown risks.
“But if a woman is depressed enough to warrant treatment, then treatment is probably reasonable,” he added. That can mean antidepressants or other options such as talk therapy.
Shelton said women should also seek treatment for other health and lifestyle issues tied to depression, such as being overweight and smoking, preferably before getting pregnant.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/VvAQrl Journal of the American Medical Association, online January 1, 2013.
Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans looked ahead on Wednesday toward the next round of even bigger budget fights after reaching a hard-fought "fiscal cliff" deal that narrowly averted potentially devastating tax hikes and spending cuts.
The agreement, approved late on Tuesday by the Republican-led House of Representatives after a bitter political struggle, was a victory for Obama, who had won re-election on a promise to address budget woes in part by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
But it set up political showdowns over the next two months on spending cuts and on raising the nation's limit on borrowing. Republicans, angry the deal did little to curb the federal deficit, promised to use the debt ceiling debate to win deep spending cuts next time.
"Our opportunity here is on the debt ceiling," Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said on MSNBC, adding Republicans would have the political leverage against Obama in that debate. "We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown, which is what that could mean."
Republicans, who acknowledged they had lost the fiscal cliff fight by agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy without gaining much in return, vowed the next deal would have to include significant cuts in government benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid health care for retirees and the poor that were the biggest drivers of federal debt.
"This is going to be much uglier to me than the tax issue ... this is going to be about entitlement reform," Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee said on CNBC.
"This is the debate that's going to be far more serious. Hopefully, now that we have this other piece behind us - hopefully - we'll deal in a real way with the kinds of things our nation needs to face," he said.
Obama urged "a little less drama" when the Congress and White House next address thorny fiscal issues like the government's rapidly mounting $16 trillion debt load.
The fiscal cliff showdown had worried businesses and financial markets, and U.S. stocks soared at the opening after lawmakers agreed to the deal.
The Dow Jones industrial average surged 262.45 points, or 2.00 percent, at 13,366.59. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 29.79 points, or 2.09 percent, at 1,455.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 77.45 points, or 2.57 percent, at 3,096.97.
The crisis ended when dozens of Republicans in the House of Representatives buckled and backed a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate that hiked taxes on households earning more than $450,000 annually. Spending cuts of $109 billion in military and domestic programs were delayed only for two months.
Economists had warned the fiscal cliff of across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts would have punched a $600 billion hole in the economy this year and threatened to send the country back into recession.
RELUCTANT REPUBLICANS
House Republicans had mounted a late effort to add hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts to the package and spark a confrontation with the Senate, but it failed.
In the end, they reluctantly approved the Senate bill by a bipartisan vote of 257 to 167 and sent it on to Obama to sign into law. "We are ensuring that taxes aren't increased on 99 percent of our fellow Americans," said Republican Representative David Dreier of California.
The vote underlined the precarious position of House Speaker John Boehner, who will ask his Republicans to re-elect him as speaker on Thursday when a new Congress is sworn in. Boehner backed the bill but most House Republicans, including his top lieutenants, voted against it.
The speaker had sought to negotiate a "grand bargain" with Obama to overhaul the U.S. tax code and rein in health and retirement programs that will balloon in coming decades as the population ages.
But Boehner could not unite his members behind an alternative to Obama's tax measures.
Income tax rates will now rise on individuals earning more than $400,000 and families earning more than $450,000 per year, and the amount of deductions they can take to lower their tax bill will be limited.
Low temporary rates that have been in place for the past decade will be made permanent for less-affluent taxpayers, along with a range of targeted tax breaks put in place to fight the 2009 economic downturn.
However, workers will see up to $2,000 more taken out of their paychecks annually with the expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the bill will increase budget deficits by nearly $4 trillion over the coming 10 years, compared to the budget savings that would occur if the extreme measures of the cliff were to kick in.
But the measure will actually save $650 billion during that time period when measured against the tax and spending policies that were in effect on Monday, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an independent group that has pushed for more aggressive deficit savings.
(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Richard Cowan; Editing by Jackie Frank)
It’s a simple request: I just want my online calendars to sync with my smartphone… is that too much to ask? It took some initial research and finesse, but I’ve discovered the best ways to get your Yahoo and Google calendars to appear on either an Android or Apple IOS mobile device.
Google Calendar on Android Phone
When you first set up your Android phone, you had to create or enter your Google account info, so the phone already has the login info for your Google Calendar. Now you can go to your phone’s Settings, choose Accounts, click the Google account and then make sure “Sync Calendar” is checked. Then go to the Calendar App on your Android phone and it should be there.
For multiple calendars, hit the Settings button and then Calendars to customize which Google calendars you see.
Yahoo Calendar on Android Phone
Although it seems like it should be easy to add the Yahoo Calendar to your Android, I never got mine to sync. Theoretically, you would open the Android calendar on your phone, hit the Settings option, and Add Account. But depending on the flavor of Android I tried, I either couldn’t add a Yahoo account or when I did, it didn’t sync. It could just be me, but I found a lot of people online with the same issue. So I tried one of the most recommended apps to solve the problem – Smoothsync for Yahoo. It costs just under three dollars, and once you install it, you can sync all your Yahoo calendars into the native Android calendar. Ah, sweet relief.
[Related: New Tricks for New (and Old) Androids]
Yahoo Calendar on iPhone
On your IOS device, hit Settings. If you haven’t added your Yahoo Account yet, do so by going to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Choose “Add Account.” Once you’ve input your Yahoo login info, the next screen gives you the option to Sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Make sure calendars is on. Hit the Home button, open the IOS calendar. Hit the Calendars button on the top corner and you will see all your calendars listed under Yahoo. If you only have one Yahoo calendar, make sure you check to have it show in your IOS Cal. Also, many people have multiple Yahoo calendars: a family calendar, a work calendar, a soccer team calendar for the kids, and a personal calendar. You can customize which of these Yahoo Calendars show up by checking or unchecking them in this screen.
Google Calendar on iPhone
It’s a little more complicated, but you can also put a Google or Gmail calendar on the iPhone. Here’s how:
If you only have your one personal Google calendar to sync, you do things the same way as with Yahoo: Go to Settings on your IOS device, add your Google account (if you haven’t done so yet) by going to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Choose “Add Account.”
Once you’ve input your Google login info, the next screen gives you the option to Sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Make sure Calendars is on. Hit the Home button, then open the IOS calendar. Hit the Calendars button on the top corner and you will see your calendar listed under Google. You can track those Google dates in the IOS calendar and multiple Yahoo calendars at the same time.
But if you want multiple Google calendars, you need an app for that. Google does let you do this through their mobile site, but that’s basically just a website without the power of notifications and all the extras you like from your calendars. So I suggest getting the CalenMob app. It’s free with ads or $ 5 ad-free. It syncs all your Google calendars to the app (not the native IOS calendar) and adds in notification options, SMS functions and email alert options. It also syncs simultaneously to your Yahoo calendars.
[Related: True/False: Never Sell Your Old Phone]
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans looked ahead on Wednesday toward the next round of even bigger budget fights after reaching a hard-fought "fiscal cliff" deal that narrowly averted potentially devastating tax hikes and spending cuts.
The agreement, approved late on Tuesday by the Republican-led House of Representatives after a bitter political struggle, was a victory for Obama, who had won re-election on a promise to address budget woes in part by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
But it set up political showdowns over the next two months on spending cuts and on raising the nation's limit on borrowing. Republicans, angry the deal did little to curb the federal deficit, promised to use the debt ceiling debate to win deep spending cuts next time.
"Our opportunity here is on the debt ceiling," Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said on MSNBC, adding Republicans would have the political leverage against Obama in that debate. "We Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary, partial government shutdown, which is what that could mean."
Republicans, who acknowledged they had lost the fiscal cliff fight by agreeing to raise taxes on the wealthy without gaining much in return, vowed the next deal would have to include significant cuts in government benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid health care for retirees and the poor that were the biggest drivers of federal debt.
"This is going to be much uglier to me than the tax issue ... this is going to be about entitlement reform," Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee said on CNBC.
"This is the debate that's going to be far more serious. Hopefully, now that we have this other piece behind us - hopefully - we'll deal in a real way with the kinds of things our nation needs to face," he said.
Obama urged "a little less drama" when the Congress and White House next address thorny fiscal issues like the government's rapidly mounting $16 trillion debt load.
The fiscal cliff showdown had worried businesses and financial markets, and U.S. stocks soared at the opening after lawmakers agreed to the deal.
The Dow Jones industrial average surged 262.45 points, or 2.00 percent, at 13,366.59. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 29.79 points, or 2.09 percent, at 1,455.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 77.45 points, or 2.57 percent, at 3,096.97.
The crisis ended when dozens of Republicans in the House of Representatives buckled and backed a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate that hiked taxes on households earning more than $450,000 annually. Spending cuts of $109 billion in military and domestic programs were delayed only for two months.
Economists had warned the fiscal cliff of across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts would have punched a $600 billion hole in the economy this year and threatened to send the country back into recession.
RELUCTANT REPUBLICANS
House Republicans had mounted a late effort to add hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts to the package and spark a confrontation with the Senate, but it failed.
In the end, they reluctantly approved the Senate bill by a bipartisan vote of 257 to 167 and sent it on to Obama to sign into law. "We are ensuring that taxes aren't increased on 99 percent of our fellow Americans," said Republican Representative David Dreier of California.
The vote underlined the precarious position of House Speaker John Boehner, who will ask his Republicans to re-elect him as speaker on Thursday when a new Congress is sworn in. Boehner backed the bill but most House Republicans, including his top lieutenants, voted against it.
The speaker had sought to negotiate a "grand bargain" with Obama to overhaul the U.S. tax code and rein in health and retirement programs that will balloon in coming decades as the population ages.
But Boehner could not unite his members behind an alternative to Obama's tax measures.
Income tax rates will now rise on individuals earning more than $400,000 and families earning more than $450,000 per year, and the amount of deductions they can take to lower their tax bill will be limited.
Low temporary rates that have been in place for the past decade will be made permanent for less-affluent taxpayers, along with a range of targeted tax breaks put in place to fight the 2009 economic downturn.
However, workers will see up to $2,000 more taken out of their paychecks annually with the expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the bill will increase budget deficits by nearly $4 trillion over the coming 10 years, compared to the budget savings that would occur if the extreme measures of the cliff were to kick in.
But the measure will actually save $650 billion during that time period when measured against the tax and spending policies that were in effect on Monday, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an independent group that has pushed for more aggressive deficit savings.
(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Richard Cowan; Editing by Jackie Frank)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Unlike women in the U.S., Canada and much of Europe, most women in the world can access the birth control pill without a prescription, according to a new study.
As medical organizations and other groups push to ease the prescription requirements for the Pill in the U.S. and elsewhere, “we can start to use this information to… get a sense of the safety of women having access to this method where no prescription is required,” said Kari White, who studies birth control at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
The Pill is generally considered safe, said White, who was not involved in the new work, and some studies have shown that, without a doctor’s input, women can accurately screen themselves for risk factors to steer away from using the Pill if it’s not appropriate for them.
Earlier this year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a leading group of women’s doctors, endorsed the idea of making the birth control pill available without a prescription (see Reuters Health report of November 20, 2012 here: http://reut.rs/UH0Zz9).
In a survey of government health officials, pharmaceutical companies, family planning groups, medical providers and other experts in 147 countries Dr. Daniel Grossman, of Ibis Reproductive Health in Oakland, California, and his colleagues found that women in the U.S. and 44 other countries need a prescription to get birth control pills.
The group reported in the medical journal Contraception that while another 56 countries had laws requiring prescriptions, in practice women could access the contraception over-the-counter.
Thirty-five countries legally allowed access to oral contraceptives over-the-counter, and 11 countries allowed over-the-counter access as long as the woman is screened to ensure that she is a good candidate.
“The patterns we saw were interesting,” said Grossman. “Higher income countries – western Europe, Australia, Japan and North America – generally require a prescription.”
Grossman told Reuters Health he couldn’t explain why these patterns have emerged.
“Perhaps in places like China and India that have pills available over-the-counter formally without a prescription might be consistent with strong national family planning programs,” he speculated.
Dr. Ward Cates, of FHI 360, a research organization in Durham, North Carolina, said the lack of a prescription requirement might also reflect a general approach to making health care more accessible in countries where it is less available.
In some countries, “healthcare tends to be more fragmented and healthcare oversight tends to be more fragmented. Therefore the availability of products tends to percolate to outlets that tend to be more accessible to the public,” said Cates, who was not part of the study.
Grossman said it will be useful for countries looking to ease restrictions on birth control access to look to the experiences of these countries.
“Will this information about the availability of pills being over-the-counter in other countries influence policy here? Probably not,” Grossman told Reuters Health.
“But I do think it helps to put it in perspective that this is not something revolutionary.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/S51BnH Contraception, online December 10, 2012.
Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
TAMOUN, West Bank (AP) — An arrest raid by undercover Israeli soldiers disguised as vegetable vendors ignited rare clashes in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, residents said, leaving at 10 Palestinians wounded.
Israeli army raids into Palestinian areas to seize activists and militants are fairly common. The raids are normally coordinated with Palestinian security forces, and suspects are usually apprehended without violence.
The clashes began early Tuesday after Israeli forces disguised as merchants in a vegetable truck arrested one man. Regular army forces then entered the town, prompting youths to hurl rocks to try to prevent more arrests.
Israeli forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition as youths set tires and bins on fire to block the passage of military vehicles. In several hours of clashes, dozens of masked youths hid behind makeshift barriers, hurling rocks and firebombs at soldiers.
Faris Bisharat, a resident of Tamoun, said 10 men were wounded, some by live fire. Bisharat said the wanted men belong to Islamic Jihad, a violent group sworn to Israel’s destruction. It wasn’t clear how many men Israeli forces sought to arrest. There were no immediate details on how seriously the 10 were hurt.
The Israeli military said it arrested a “terrorist affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror group.” It said two soldiers were injured during the raid.
The fighting, which broke out in several parts of the town of some 8,000 people, were a rare, angry response. It was also unusual for Israeli forces to use live fire toward Palestinian demonstrators. Israel says it uses live fire only in extremely dangerous situations.
Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News
(Reuters) – A celebrity photographer was struck and killed by a car on a Los Angeles highway on Tuesday after snapping photographs of a Ferrari registered to pop star Justin Bieber, police said.
Bieber wasn’t in his car, which had been pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers on Interstate 405 for suspected speeding, Los Angeles Police Department Officer Cleon Joseph said on Wednesday.
Highway patrol officers saw the 29-year-old paparazzo taking photographs of the scene on Tuesday evening and ordered him to return to his car for safety reasons, Joseph said.
The photographer, whose name was not released, refused to leave. After officers repeated their order, he was struck while trying to cross four lanes of traffic, Joseph said.
Charges were unlikely to be filed against the driver who struck the photographer, the officer said.
Bieber was stopped by police for speeding on a Los Angeles freeway last July. He told officers he was being hounded by paparazzi at the time.
Prosecutors charged a celebrity photographer under a California law that criminalizes dangerous driving when taking photos commercially, but a judge later dismissed those counts.
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Jan 1 (Infostrada Sports) – Results from the Auckland Classic Women’s Singles Round 1 matches on Tuesday
2-Julia Goerges (Germany) beat Anastasija Sevastova (Latvia) 6-3 6-4
Marina Erakovic (New Zealand) beat Stephanie Dubois (Canada) 6-2 6-1
1-Agnieszka Radwanska (Poland) beat Greta Arn (Hungary) 6-2 6-2
8-Mona Barthel (Germany) beat Grace Min (U.S.) 6-1 6-3
6-Yaroslava Shvedova (Kazakhstan) beat Lara Arruabarrena Vecino (Spain) 6-3 6-2
Romina Oprandi (Switzerland) beat Nudnida Luangnam (Thailand) 6-0 6-2
Heather Watson (Britain) beat 5-Sorana Cirstea (Romania) 6-3 (Cirstea retired)
Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner is celebrating the new year as a married man once again.
The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his “runaway bride,” Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year’s Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old “Playmate of the Month” in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.
Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year’s Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.
The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner’s been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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