Children born to mothers who ate nuts or nut products daily were 50% more likely to have asthma than those whose moms avoided the foods, a Dutch study shows.

What's new: A pregnant woman who eats nuts or nut products every day during pregnancy may increase her child's risk of developing asthma.

The finding: A large study by the Dutch government has found that children born to women who ate nuts or peanuts, or items made from them, such as peanut butter, daily while pregnant were 50% more likely to wheeze, have difficulty breathing or have asthma diagnosed by a doctor compared with children whose mothers rarely or never ate nuts or nut products while pregnant. The study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine this month, is part of a larger, ongoing research initiative, the Prevention and Incidence of Asthma and Mite Allergy study, which is investigating how allergies develop in children and how they can be prevented.

After the birth of a child, both men and women are susceptible. How to respond 

The birth of John Hyman's first child didn't fill him with the joy he might have hoped for. Far from treasuring every minute with his son, the Rockville, Md., college writing instructor reacted by teaching more courses just to get himself out of the house. "I didn't know what my role was there," recalls Hyman, 51. His wife, by contrast, bonded instantly with their son, Jake, now a teenager. "Betsy fell in love. It was primal," he says. "I didn't have that experience. I thought I was broken. I remember thinking this was a dirty little secret I would have to deal with."

Hyman wasn't broken. He was depressed. Long recognized as a problem afflicting some new mothers, postpartum depression can also grip men—though mental health professionals acknowledge that until recently they largely overlooked that fact. Male postpartum depression took a step out of obscurity this month when it was for the first time the subject of a workshop at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.

Study Shows Women Who Eat Breakfast Cereals Give Birth to More Boys

In addition to being the most important meal of the day, breakfast may help determine your unborn baby's sex.

In a newly reported study, women who ate breakfast cereal gave birth to more boys, while those who skipped breakfast had more girls.

Women who ate more total calories also delivered more boys, even though the overall male-to-female birth ratio among the study participants was close to 50/50.

The early findings in no way prove that what a woman does or doesn't eat prior to conception influences her baby's sex.

But they do hint at a sex-selection bias among humans similar to that seen in other animals, favoring male births among well-fed mothers and female births among mothers who are less well nourished.

CHICAGO -- Pregnant women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day have twice the risk of having a miscarriage as those who avoid caffeine, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

They said the study provides strong evidence that high doses of caffeine during pregnancy -- 200 milligrams or more per day or the equivalent of two cups of coffee -- significantly increase the risk of miscarriage.

And they said the research may finally put to rest conflicting reports about the link between caffeine consumption and miscarriage.

"Women who are pregnant or are actively seeking to become pregnant should stop drinking coffee for three months or hopefully throughout pregnancy," said Dr. De-Kun Li of Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, whose study appears in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Fish oil accelerates immune system maturation in infants

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. Infants are born with an immature immune system. Important characteristics of the immature immune system are an inadequate ability to produce certain cytokines (hormones that activate the immune system), notably gamma-interferon and interleukin-2 (IL-2) and a preponderance of Th2 helper T-cells over Th1 helper cells. Th1 helper T-cells enhance the ability of the immune system to respond to virus, bacteria, fungi and parasites, while Th2 helper T-cells are involved in allergic reactions and, if overactive, can cause inflammation such as seen in rheumatoid arthritis. Th2 cells release interleukin-6 (IL-6), excessive amounts of which are associated with allergic reactions and autoimmune disorders such as wheezing and asthma.

Healthy maturation of the infant’s immune system would thus involve increased production of gamma-interferon and/or IL-2 and an increase in Th1 cells to improve the ratio of Th1 to Th2 cells. Researchers at Copenhagen University report that supplementation with fish oil at age 9 months helps accelerate maturation.

Repromedix Corp., the leading national diagnostic laboratory for fertility testing, announces today the launch of Plan Ahead, a new blood test that provides an assessment of a woman's egg supply by combining multiple factors including the measurement of ovary-related hormones AMH, Inhibin B, and FSH with innovative and proprietary technology. The window of opportunity for a woman to have children by natural conception is dependent upon an adequate supply of eggs which inevitably declines as a woman ages and her "biological clock ticks." Plan Ahead enables a woman to compare her estimated egg supply with the normal range expected for women of the same age.

"The Plan Ahead test represents an extraordinary advance in fertility diagnostics compared to what has been readily available to the general population," said Dr. Benjamin Leader, Chief Medical Officer. "Many fertility experts view the gold standard of egg supply measurement to be the number of eggs obtained through egg retrieval, an expensive procedure reserved for specialty fertility clinics involving hormone injections and a minimally invasive procedure. The Plan Ahead test offers similar information to the general public via a simple blood test."

Planned Parenthood issued a handy guide to the year in women's health, summing up the major events, trends, and studies of 2007, so RH Reality Check spoke with Dr. Vanessa Cullins, Planned Parenthood's vice president for medical affairs, to get a deeper understanding of the health events that made the news. Emily Douglas picked three of the headlines -- long-term use of hormonal birth control resulting in an increase in artery-clogging plaque, the increase in the teen birth rate, and the abnormalities found in the ovaries and reproductive tract tissues of mice that had neonatal exposure to bisphenol A -- and asked for Dr. Cullins to provide the story behind the news.

Planned Parenthood writes,

The Danes and Brits have recently delivered information to the scientific world that is obvious to a lot of us -- that babies delivered by elective Cesarean sections are more likely to have respiratory problems than those delivered vaginally or by emergency surgery. Researchers studied more than 34,000 births at a Danish hospital, 2,687 of which were elective surgical births. It’s no surprise that the younger the gestational age, the greater the chance of respiratory problems the newborn encountered.

"The reason is unclear," The British Medical Journal reports, adding that "researchers theorize that hormonal and physiological changes in labor might help fetal lungs mature properly." This isn’t rocket science: Babies allowed to do their job -- starting up their mother's labor when the time is right -- fare better. One would hope this to be the foundation of Obstetrics 101 classes. No matter how fancy the measuring machine, despite a caregiver's best intuitive gifts, even though a hospital's newborn intensive care unit is state-of-the-art, nature still holds the winning hand. Allow labor and birth to unfold at their intended pace, and most babies will come into the world with their little body systems developed and ready to meet the challenge of life outside mama.

A state advisory board on Monday called for a study to determine if sodas and energy drinks containing caffeine pose a risk to pregnant women.

The review could lead to warning labels on the drinks under Proposition 65, a 1986 ballot measure that requires the state to identify chemicals that could cause cancer or birth defects.

"If I were a pregnant woman or a woman thinking about being pregnant, I would want to know, should I be avoiding caffeine?" said Renee Sharp, a senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group, an environmental research organization that's based in Washington D.C. "It's a really important question, and I think people are looking for answers."

The advisory panel, the Science Advisory Board Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee, also requested an immediate review of Bisphenol-A, which could lead to warning labels on plastic baby bottles, water bottles and reusable food containers. The chemical Bisphenol-A has been shown to affect hormonal levels.

It was unclear Monday whether the state would follow the board's advice.

Women with bipolar disorder who stop taking their medication -- such as lithium, antipsychotics and anticonvulsants prescribed as mood stabilizers -- before or shortly after becoming pregnant appear to be much more likely to suffer a recurrence of the disorder, according to a study reported in the December issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP), the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

One does not expect a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals to begin her lecture with a glowing tribute to Rachel Carson. The ARHP, after all, is a group mainly composed of clinicians who offer the full range of reproductive and sexual health services -- prenantal, contraceptive and abortion care, sex education, treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and so on. While Carson, who wrote The Sea Around Us in 1951, was one of the pioneers of environmentalism and remains a revered figure in sectors of that movement, it is safe to say that she is no longer a household word in American culture.

But the presence of the speaker, Charlotte Brody -- there to receive ARHP's "Preserving Core Values in Science Award" -- and the connections she drew between Carson's legacy and the concerns of ARHP members reflect a very promising new direction for the reproductive health movement. Brody, a distinguished environmental health advocate, is the executive director of Commonweal, a nonprofit health and research institution in Bolinas, California, and a founder of the group, Health Care without Harm.

Brody took the audience through Carson's early work on the dangers of pesticides and other chemical agents. When she mentioned the rage Carson evoked from various quarters, including the chemical industry -- she was called "a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature," a "Communist," and a "spinster" who had no right to "worry about genetics" -- I thought of the similar demonization of Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman, some of the earliest voices for reproductive freedom in this country, and of course the harassment and abuse directed at contemporary ARHP members who are involved in abortion care.

But the most relevant part of Brody's talk for this audience was her discussion of the specific threats to reproductive health posed by various widely used chemicals in the United States. There is mounting concern in the scientific community about the impact of these chemicals on rising infertility rates and on hazards to early fetal development. Consider the chemical compound bisphenol A (BPA), used in many plastic products, including baby bottles and microwave containers. BPA has been under increasing scrutiny because of its alleged health effects, and animal studies have linked this compound to a host of reproductive problems.