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1 December, 2022
Scientists develop a new hormone-free contraceptiveResearchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Karolinska Institutet are part of a collaborative study that has made progress in the testing of an innovative contraceptive method, a vaginal gel, that preclinical studies have shown prevents sperm from reaching the egg. The results are described in a paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
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7 September, 2022
Telemedicine can give vulnerable women access to safe medical abortionsA new study published in The Lancet shows that medical abortion can be carried out both safely and effectively via telemedicine, without a routine ultrasound examination. The study, which is a collaboration between researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Cape Town in South Africa, highlights the opportunities to provide safe and effective abortion services in low-resource settings.
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5 September, 2022
Contraceptive advice save lives Having a baby at an early age is fraught with risk. Advice from other teenagers can be one way of increasing the use of contraceptives amongst refugee girls in Uganda.
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Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Bristol have investigated the relationship between mode of delivery and sexual well-being several years after childbirth. The study, published in the journal BJOG, showed no difference in sexual frequency or sexual satisfaction in women who were delivered vaginally or by caesarean section.
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To investigate the long-term benefit of hormone-lowering treatment, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have done a 20-year follow-up of premenopausal women with breast cancer. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, indicates that the treatment provides protection even after a longer period of time and that different patients seem to benefit from different hormonal treatments.
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13 May, 2022
New findings in the vaginal microbiomeA new study shows that the menstrual phase has effects on the microbiome. “This will be very important for planning future studies, both in basic science and for interventions aiming to improve the vaginal microbiome”, corresponding author Ina Schuppe Koistinen at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell biology at Karolinska Institutet, says.
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Women who have had one ovary surgically removed (unilateral oophorectomy) are less likely to become pregnant after in vitro fertilisation and give birth to fewer babies than women with both ovaries. That is according to an extensive meta-analysis published in the journal Fertility and Sterility by researchers at Karolinska Institutet.
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23 February, 2022
Jessica had children after cancerWhen she was 14 years old Jessica Strid was treated for cancer and was told that it would be difficult for her to get pregnant. Today she has two children. ”I am very grateful”, she says.
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23 February, 2022
Fertility treatment: Help for people who have had cancerMany young people whose fertility have been impaired due to cancer treatment can today be helped to become parents. Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg, Adjunct Professor at the Department of Oncology and Pathology at Karolinska Institutet and Senior Consultant at Karolinska University Hospital, answers six common questions.
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16 February, 2022
“We ought to talk more about the difficulties of having children”Erik Vismer and his wife sought help from an IVF clinic to get children. What they didn’t expect was the effort and time that the process demanded from them. Read an in-depth article series from KI’s Swedish popular science magazine.
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16 February, 2022
The dream of becoming someone's parentAccording to the WHO, almost 50 million couples worldwide are involuntarily childless while demand for assisted fertilisation is expected to grow as treatments have become both more effective and more widely accessible. Read the first article from a in-depth series about infertility from KI’s Swedish popular science magazine.
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A study involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet and IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences – demonstrates how zika and herpes viruses can lead to brain malformations during early pregnancy. The researchers used 3D models of human brains to study which mechanisms are involved in virus-induced microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with smaller-than-usual heads. The results are published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
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22 March, 2021
Viagra may prolong life for men with coronary artery diseaseMen with stable coronary artery disease who are on Viagra due to impotence seem to live longer and have a lower risk of experiencing a new heart attack, a study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology reports.
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30 December, 2020
Study shows how access to legal and safe abortion reduces morbidityStudy shows that the legalization of abortion in Mexico City shows how access to legal and safe abortion reduces abortion-related morbidity such as bleeding.
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How the immune system adapts to pregnancies has puzzled scientists for decades. Now, findings from an international group of researchers, led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, reveal important changes that occur in the thymus to prevent miscarriages and gestational diabetes. The results are published in the journal Nature.
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Women with breast cancer whose eggs or ovarian tissue were frozen had more children after their diagnosis than women who did not undergo fertility preservation using those methods before start of cancer treatment. That is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in JAMA Oncology. According to the researchers, the result highlights the importance of reproductive counseling and fertility preservation for women who are diagnosed with cancer at a young age.
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25 September, 2020
Women could conceive after ovarian tumours Women receiving fertility-sparing surgery for treatment of borderline ovarian tumours were able to have children, a study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in Fertility & Sterility shows. Natural fertility was preserved in most of them and only a small proportion required assisted reproductive treatment such as in vitro fertilization. Survival in the group was also as high as in women who had undergone radical surgical for treatment of similar tumours.
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1 September, 2020
Narcolepsy drug did not increase risk of fetal malformationModafinil is used to treat conditions such as narcolepsy. Reports have associated the drug with an increased risk of malformation in babies born to mothers who had taken it while pregnant. Now, a large registry study involving over two million pregnant women in Sweden and Norway shows that there is no such association. The study, which is published in JAMA, was conducted by researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
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2 March, 2020
Egg stem cells do not exist, new study showsResearchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have analysed all cell types in the human ovary and found that the hotly debated so-called egg stem cells do not exist. The results, published in Nature Communications, open the way for research on improved methods of treating involuntary childlessness.
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Children conceived with assisted reproductive techniques have a somewhat higher mortality risk during their first weeks of life than children conceived naturally, according to a study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility. The researchers link the increased risk to a higher degree of premature births in IVF-conceived children. The risk of infant mortality is still very small for both groups and after 1 year of age there is no difference.
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Babies born with low birth weights are more likely to have poor cardiorespiratory fitness later in life than their normal-weight peers. That is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal JAHA. The findings underscore the importance of prevention strategies to reduce low birth weights even among those carried to at term delivery.
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Patients with the inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis have a higher risk of dying from colorectal cancer, despite modern therapy, even though the risk has declined in recent years. This is according to a new study published in the scientific journal The Lancet by a team of Swedish and Danish researchers.
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Women who have C-sections are no more likely to have children who develop obesity than women who give birth naturally, according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal PLOS Medicine. The findings contradict several smaller studies that did find an association between C-section deliveries and offspring obesity but did not consider the numerous maternal and prenatal factors that the researchers did in this study.
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Daughters of women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) are five times more likely to be diagnosed with PCOS as adults, and the generational transmission is driven by high androgen levels during pregnancy, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report. Their results, which are based on register-based and clinical studies as well as transgenerational animal studies, are published in Nature Medicine.
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21 November, 2019
New study shows lower mortality from induction of labor at 41 weeksInducing labor after 41 instead of 42 full weeks of pregnancy appears to be safer in terms of perinatal survival, according to new research from the University of Gothenburg, Sahlgrenska and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The current study is expected to provide a key piece of evidence for upcoming decisions in maternity care.
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20 November, 2019
Pregnant women with eating disorders run higher risk of complicationsPregnant women with eating disorders should undergo extended pregnancy screenings considering their increased risk of complications. That is the conclusion from a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. The researchers were, for example, able to show that children to mothers with eating disorders had an increased risk of premature birth and being born with a small head circumference.
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Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences have investigated the effects of testosterone supplementation in young athletically active women in a randomised, placebo-controlled trial. The results, which are published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, show that there is a causal relationship between elevated male sex hormone levels and increased aerobic capacity in young women. There was also an increase in muscle mass but not muscle strength.
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15 October, 2019
Weight-loss surgery cuts risk of major birth defectsChildren born to women who underwent gastric bypass surgery before becoming pregnant had a lower risk of major birth defects than children born to women who had severe obesity at the start of their pregnancy. That’s according to a matched cohort study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Örebro University published in the scientific journal JAMA. The findings indicate that weight-loss and improved blood sugar control could reduce the risk of major birth defects.
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17 September, 2019
Risk factors in recurrent dysplasia identifiedWomen have an increased risk of high-grade cervical lesions returning after surgery if there have been lesions in the resection margin, especially if high-risk HPV (human papillomavirus) is found in the follow-up test, reports a new longitudinal study from Karolinska Institutet published in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The researchers also found that many other diseases can be independent risk factors in lesion recurrence.
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Young women with early stage ovarian cancer can undergo fertility-preserving surgery without affecting the safety of their cancer treatment, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in a national study published in the journal Gynecologic Oncology.
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22 March, 2018
New study elucidates link between PCOS and anxietyMaternal obesity and androgen excess induce sex-specific anxiety in the offspring, according to a study on mice by researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in The FASEB Journal. The findings may help explain why children born to mothers with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have increased risk of developing anxiety later in life.
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9 August, 2017
Hormone from fat tissue can give protection against PCOSObesity and reduced insulin sensitivity are common in polycystic ovary syndrome, PCOS. New research based on animal studies, and to be published in the journal PNAS, reveals that the hormone adiponectin can protect against these changes.
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Acupuncture has no effect on involuntary childlessness caused by polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), the most effective treatment for PCOS being the drug chlomiphene, a joint international study conducted at Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, China, reports. The study, which involved the participation of researchers at Karolinska Institutet, is published in JAMA.
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3 November, 2015
Learning more about the link between PCOS and mental healthWomen with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have high levels of androgens in their blood, which has been assumed able to affect fetal development during pregnancy. An international team of researchers led from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has now identified a hormonal mechanism that might explain why women with PCOS run a higher risk of developing symptoms of mental ill-health, such as anxiety and depression, in adulthood.
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Two scientific studies led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet are expected to form the basis of new international recommendations for the treatment of medical abortions and miscarriages – recommendations that may also lead to a change in clinical practice in Sweden.
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