Detailed results of the “estrogen-alone” study within the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), which was terminated in early March 2004, are providing some of the first answers to questions about the efficacy of estrogen alone to prevent chronic disease in healthy, postmenopausal women who have had a hysterectomy. WHI researchers, including investigators at Brigham and Women’s [...]

During the past decade in the United States, increasing attention has been paid to lowering the incidence of multiple gestations resulting from the use of assisted reproductive technology. To determine whether such efforts have been successful, we assessed national trends in embryo-transfer practice patterns and in outcomes after the use of assisted reproductive technology. Methods [...]

A research team from the University of Glasgow has been awarded nearly £129, 000 by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to investigate the cause of pre-eclampsia (PE), a condition that kills nearly 600 babies in the UK each year. They believe it may be due to the excessive release of fatty acids and other potentially [...]

American women who smoke rose dramatically during the 20th century, resulting in a 600 percent increase by the year 2003 in the number of women who died of lung cancer. In the same period, the number of lung cancer deaths in men declined. Lung cancer has now surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of [...]

Early results from a pioneering study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicate that small uterine fibroids are associated with an increased risk of miscarriage. Fibroids, benign muscle tumors of the uterus, are estimated to affect more than one in five women of reproductive age. But little is known about the influence [...]

In the past fifty years, there has been a 600 percent increase in the number of women who will be diagnosed with lung cancer and die of the disease. However, the death rate for men has decreased slightly over the same period. An estimated 68,500 women will die from lung cancer this year; a number [...]

A large, multi-center heart disease prevention study, part of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), found that estrogen-alone hormone therapy had no effect on coronary heart disease risk but increased the risk of stroke for postmenopausal women. The study also found that estrogen-alone therapy significantly increased the risk of deep vein thrombosis, had no significant effect [...]

Before the 1960′s knowledge of the intrauterine environment was like a black box, limiting clinical understanding, and monitoring of the fetus during pregnancy. Little was known about the fetus until after birth happened. Now that has changed dramatically, and there have been revolutionary advances, particularly in the last 20 years enabling clinicians to diagnose and [...]

Regardless of sexual orientation, unmarried women ages 40 to 75 voiced reluctance to undergo routine cancer screening tests, feeling out of place or misunderstood in health care settings, according to the first wave of information from a five-year Brown University Cancer Screening Project for Women. Unmarried women said their feelings were based on everything from [...]

Women with early-stage breast cancer face three late breast cancer consequences: disease recurrence within the conserved breast, development of a contralateral breast cancer, and manifestation of distant metastases. Although local therapy with surgery and radiotherapy is used to minimize the first possibility, adjuvant systemic therapy may theoretically reduce the likelihood of all three events. In [...]