Browse all articles

BACKGROUND: Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are considered to be at increased risk of miscarriage. Since metformin has beneficial effects on the risk factors contributing to first-trimeste...

For many years, osteoporosis in women was equated with estrogen deficiency. The recent articles by Zaidi and colleagues offer a new challenge to the estrogen-deficiency-osteoporosis hypothesis by show...

Routine bone mineral densitometry (BMD) screening has been recommended for women aged >or=65 yr (Osteoporosis Canada [OC], International Society for Clinical Densitometry [ISCD], Canadian and United S...

Young patients and their parents often are unsure about what represents normal menstrual patterns, and clinicians also may be unsure about normal ranges for menstrual cycle length and amount and durat...

Clinically a couple is considered to be infertile after at least one year without contraception and without pregnancy. There was scant knowledge about the prevalences of infertility, involuntary child...

Ordinary women and official statements confuse and conflate perimenopause—the long, complex, life phase of higher and chaotic estrogen levels—with the low and stable estrogen levels of menopause. This...

Approaches to measuring fecundity include the assessment of time to pregnancy and day-specific probabilities of conception (daily fecundities) indexed to a day of ovulation. In this paper, we develop ...

Conception, as defined by the fertilisation of an ovum by a sperm, marks the beginning of human development. Currently, a biomarker of conception is not available; as conception occurs shortly after o...

OBJECTIVE: To perform a meta-analysis of case-control studies that addressed whether prior oral contraceptive (OC) use is associated with premenopausal breast cancer. METHODS: We searched the MEDLINE...

Fertility awareness-based methods of family planning help women to identify the days of the cycle they should avoid unprotected intercourse to prevent pregnancy. Therefore using fertility awareness-ba...

Supplemental vitamin D is available in 2 distinct forms: ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) and cholecalciferol (vitamin D3). Pharmacopoeias have officially regarded these 2 forms as equivalent and interchan...

Background: Understanding the effect of oral contraceptives on risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers is important because oral contraceptive use is a common, modifiable practice. ...

Background: Genetics and environmental factors are implicated in the etiology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We studied environmental factors in a population-based Swedish-Danish twin cohort usi...

Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, which is further promoted by the low utilisation of modern contraceptive methods. Yet, many communities claim to have traditiona...

Methods: We performed a cross-sectional survey of 357 reproductive-aged women, mostly Hispanic (81.8%), presenting for ambulatory and hospital reproductive care in Phoenix, AZ, about their interest in...

Introduction: It has been suggested that hormonal risk factors act predominantly on estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor (ER/PR)-positive breast cancers. However, the data have been inconsisten...

Thyroid disease in general, and hypothyroidism in particular, are very common in women. In the USA, the most common cause of primary thyroid deficiency is on an autoimmune basis due to lymphocytic (Ha...

Context: Fertility awareness-based methods of family planning help women identify the days of the menstrual cycle when they are most likely to become pregnant. To prevent pregnancy, women avoid unprot...

To the Editor: In the discussion of biologic differences between male and female fertility (April 6 issue),1 Federman states that women are fertile for only 12 hours each month. Although the egg is vi...

Introduction: The use of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors has been demonstrated to not only impair load-induced bone formation but also prevent menopause-associated bone loss. We hypothesized that ...

The concept of the ovarian cycle as a continuum considers that all types of ovarian activity encountered during the reproductive life are responses to different environmental conditions in order to en...

Objective: To determine variability in the phases of the menstrual cycle among healthy, regularly cycling women. Design: A prospective descriptive study of a new data set with biological markers to es...

CONTEXT: Euthyroid women with autoimmune thyroid disease show impairment of thyroid function during gestation and seem to suffer from a higher rate of obstetrical complications. OBJECTIVE: We sought ...

With the collaboration of Italian centres providing services on natural family planning, a prospective study collected data on 2755 menstrual cycles of 193 women. A database was constructed using info...

The principle of informed consent, aimed at the lawfulness of health assistance, tends to reflect the concept of autonomy and of decisional autodetermination of the person requiring and requesting med...

Background: While (partial) recovery of spermatogenesis, observed by means of standard semen analysis, has been seen in testicular cancer patients after chemotherapy with cisplatin, sperm genomic inte...

Effective tubal transport of ova, sperm and embryos is a prerequisite for successful spontaneous pregnancy. Although there is much yet to be discovered about the mechanisms involved, it is evident tha...

Background: Limited information exists regarding the natural progression of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in the general population, as most research has been cross-sectional or has followed ...

Introduction: Prior studies have suggested that oral contraceptives (OCs) may be associated with an increased fracture risk. However, the previous studies have only performed a limited adjustment for ...

Questions have been raised about the effects of progestogen-only contraceptive use on bone health, particularly among young women who have not yet reached peak bone mass and perimenopausal women who m...

Background: Increased menstrual bleeding and pain are the primary side effects that lead to early removal of the copper intrauterine device (IUD). Ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory d...

Estrogen exposure is a major determinant of the risk of breast cancer. This article reviews how genotoxic, mutagenic metabolites of estrogen and stimulation of tissue growth by the hormone participate...

Background: Assessing the psychological acceptability of technologies designed to assist couples in achieving pregnancy is complex. Objective: The current study developed measures relating to the imp...

Background: Urgent measures are required to stop the increase in the frequency of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers. A means of facing this problem is promoting sexual abst...

Although there have been numerous studies investigating the relationship between the use of oral contraceptives and depressive symptoms, they have differed widely in both their methods and findings. A...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the molecular mechanism for declining sperm motility in older men. DESIGN: Retrospective and prospective study. SETTING: University-based andrology unit. PATIENT(S): Semen...

Estrogen and progestin combination in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increases the incidence of breast cancer, but decreases the endometrial cancer risk of unopposed estrogen. Therefore, a SERM suc...

Cervical cancer is a complex and multifactorial disease. Although there are substantial data supporting the causative role of persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in the development of cerv...

Family history of breast cancer is an established risk factor for breast cancer. In addition, there is evidence that oral contraceptive use may be associated with a moderate increase in breast cancer ...

A protocol was developed and evaluated for nonovulating breastfeeding women to determine potential fertility with an electronic hormonal fertility monitor. The amount of required abstinence (i.e., day...

Background: Exogenous estrogens affect the onset and clinical course of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis. Oral contraceptives, a frequent source of exogenous estrogens in humans, could have a r...

Advanced practice nurses in primary care settings are often asked to give appropriate advice to couples seeking pregnancy. This article examines the issue of basal body temperature (BBT), a time-honor...

Oral contraceptive (OC) use in young women has been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. This matched case-control study aims to elucidate the combined effects of OC use and genetic fac...

The objective of this research was to determine the relative decrement in health-related quality of life, as measured by the health utilities index mark 3 (HUI3), in osteoporosis compared to other chr...

Background: The aetiology of inflammatory bowel disease remains largely unknown. Aim: We performed a comprehensive assessment of potential risk factors associated with the occurrence of inflammatory ...

Objective: To test for the possible association of past oral contraceptive (OC) use and incident fracture after menopause. Design: A prospective cohort of 93,725 postmenopausal women. Setting: Forty W...

The purpose of this review is to put into a useful clinical context the changing over time of basic ovarian-pituitary-hypothalamic relationships during perimenopause. "Perimenopause" means changes in ...

Objectives: The objective of the present paper is to review the main results of recent European cycle databases on ovulation detection and determination of the fertile window performed by the women th...