Women's Health

Women appeared to have a greater lifetime risk for obsessive-compulsive disorder than men, according to results of a meta-analysis published in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

The Women’s Preventive Services Initiative, after reviewing more than 2,000 abstracts and 300 full-text articles, recommended that primary care physicians screen women and adolescent girls aged 13 years or older for anxiety.

Women who delivered babies earlier than 37 weeks had increased risk for ischemic heart disease throughout their lifetime, researchers found.

Women’s National Basketball Association athletes frequently have increased cardiac dimensions, which can be affected by body surface area and physiologic findings, researchers reported.

Approximately one-fourth of maternal strokes associated with migraine were attributable to a hypertensive disorder, according to data published in JAMA Neurology.

Women with congenital heart defects were more likely to experience cardiac and obstetric complications during pregnancy compared with women without heart defects, researchers reported.

Cardiologists should collaborate with obstetricians, gynecologists and primary care physicians to properly identify and treat women with CVD, according to a primer published in Circulation.

This month’s cover story on pregnant women with inflammatory bowel disease covered all the relevant points. The important message is that the “enemy” here is not the medication — it’s the active Crohn’s disease or active ulcerative colitis. Treating the inflammation is of paramount importance, to maximize the chance of good pregnancy outcomes. The physicians interviewed said to develop a plan where you’re continuing the biologic throughout pregnancy. Trying to develop a plan to hold the drug in the last half of pregnancy makes things more complex, so it’s easier for patients and for providers to remember to just continue the biologic throughout pregnancy. There is a safety concern that if you do hold the biologic during the last half or last third of pregnancy, that will increase the risk for postpartum flare. The last thing a new mother needs is a flare of her IBD. It’s better all-around to just continue the medication. The main exceptions to this recommendation are methotrexate, which is totally contraindicated, and then to a lesser extent tofacitinib (Xeljanz, Pfizer) just because we don’t have enough data on it.

Inflammatory bowel disease is somewhat unique compared with other immune-mediated diseases. Its closest cousins, like rheumatoid arthritis, usually affect patients later in life.

Women with established CVD had lower rates of prescriptions for statins, aspirin and ACE inhibitors compared with men, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.