Reproductive Health

The Healio Editors compiled news on cardiovascular health for women for National Women’s Health Week.

AUSTIN, Texas — Despite the significant impact that kidney disease and its treatments can have on women’s health, patients admitted knowing very little about it, according to a presenter at the National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings.

Both abortion- and contraception-related internet searches increased from the weeks before and the weeks after the Supreme Court Dobbs decision in June 2022, according to a retrospective cross-sectional study published in JAMA Health Forum.

Mehret Birru Talabi, MD, PhD, associate program director of the rheumatology fellowship training program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, spoke with Healio about challenges patients with rheumatology face with fertility, how their RA symptoms are affected during pregnancy, and what they can to help improve their symptoms after giving birth.

From 2017 to 2021, barriers to reproductive health care increased, with the largest increases among women from historically disadvantaged populations, according to study data published in JAMA Network Open.

Losing the constitutional right to abortion is associated with a 10% increase in mental distress prevalence among women of reproductive age, researchers reported in JAMA Network Open.

Pregnancy after receiving bariatric surgery was associated with decreased risks for preeclampsia, gestational diabetes or impaired fasting glucose and large for gestational age neonates, researchers reported in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Assistive reproductive therapy is safe and demonstrates “satisfactory outcomes” in patients with systemic lupus erythematous in stable disease, according to data published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.

In an update to its 2018 public policy on abortion, the ACP cemented its position on reproductive health services, reaffirming its “opposition to undue and unnecessary governmental interference in the patient–physician relationship.”

Healio spoke with Shawana S. Moore, DNP, MSN, APRN, CRNP, WHNP-BC, about stigma and biases in endometriosis care that impacts diagnosis and treatment.