closer look
Teasing out a potential tie between long Covid and menopause
Adobe
All through the pandemic, women have been reporting period disturbances after a Covid infection or after a Covid vaccination. But research specifically on long Covid and menopause is scarce, and mostly preliminary. Traci Kurtzer, a gynecologist and menopause specialist at the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause, has been piecing this story together, writes STAT's Annalisa Merelli.
"I've been experiencing absolutely a change in the number of women I'm seeing with earlier menopausal symptoms, and the severity of symptoms being quite a bit more intense than it used to be," she said. In one 42-year-old patient diagnosed with menopause, lab results found markers for autoimmune disease and Epstein-Barr virus. "I think that this is long Covid," said Kurtzer. Read more.
reproductive health
How the fertility industry is feeling Dobbs' impact
There was a shadow overhanging this year's annual meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in New Orleans. The U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision not only ended 50 years of constitutional protection for abortion, but also fractured access to miscarriage management, cancer detection, and ectopic pregnancy treatments. And now the fertility industry is also feeling the ramifications.
In her plenary speech, Anita Allen, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, said fertility doctors are seeing more patients ask for pre-implantation genetic testing — a costly but unproven screening tool sold to improve the odds of having a healthy baby. Prospective parents may hope such measures minimize the chances of seeking an abortion. "Can you imagine being afraid to get pregnant?" Allen asked the audience. "To be so afraid that you invest thousands of dollars in pre-implantation testing in order to avoid getting caught up in the abortion prohibition mess?" STAT's Megan Molteni has more.
reproductive health
Live births more likely with gestational carriers
In other news from the field of assisted reproduction, a new research letter in JAMA reports that the chances of a live birth were higher with than without a gestational carrier — someone who carries a pregnancy for the intended parents after implantation of an embryo from those parents or a third party. That's significant because the use of gestational carriers has been rising, possibly because visibility and services are becoming more widespread for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer patients, along with changing laws about surrogacy.
The study looked at U.S. data between 2014 and 2020, when 4% of embryo transfers involved a gestational carriers. These transfers were more likely to result in pregnancy in a gestational carrier and in a live birth later. Twins were more likely when there was a gestational carrier, even after accounting for how many embryos were transferred. That might reflect the steep expenses prospective parents face with each cycle, the authors write.
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