International Journal of Women's Health and Reproduction Sciences
Year:2016 | Volume:4 | Issue:1|Papers Count:11

In 2009, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended beginning cervical cancer screening at age 21. After this policy went into effect, there was a significant decrease in screening for chlamydia in females aged 15 to 21 years. This unintended decrease in chlamydia screening occurred despite recommendations promoting chlamydia screening. Why should a policy that was intended to promote screening for one disease initiate decreased compliance with screening for another? Women’s health professionals could better understand riddles such as this one by applying concepts from nonlinear science developed and employed by physicists, economists, and meteorologists.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the perinatal outcome and pregnancy complication (preterm delivery, preterm prelabour rupture of membrane [PPROM], preeclampsia, placental abruption and intrauterine growth restriction [IUGR]) of threatened miscarriage.Materials and Methods: A total of 963 patients attended the study. Of these, 493 women had threatened miscarriage. The control group included 470 pregnants without first trimester vaginal bleeding. We compared the two groups according to maternal age, gravida, parity, spontaneous or induced abortion history, pregnancy period, livebirth or pregnancy loss, newborn weight and Apgar values after 1 and 5 minutes, newborns’ gender for livebirth and preterm deliveries.Results: Incidence of preterm delivery, abortion, lower gestational fetal weight and preterm rupture of membrane was increased in threatened miscarriage group. Mean pregnancy period in threatened miscarriage group was 243 days; in control group was 263 days. There was adverse influence of maternal age and abortion history on outcomes in pregnancies with threatened miscarriage. However sex of the fetuses and Apgar values after 1 and 5 minutes were similar between two groups.Conclusion: Threatened miscarriage is an important situation to predict both the maternal and fetal outcomes in late pregnancy. Maternal obstetric history on previous pregnancies should be questioned. It is therefore essential to consider these pregnancies as high risk group and provide careful antenatal care.

Objectives: Methamphetamine (METH) is an illicit psychoactive drug. There are different reasons of abusing METH such as for recreational use and sexual satisfaction. This study was designed to investigate the effects of short and long-term use of METH on oocyte and embryo development in mice.Materials and Methods: In this study, 75 female NMRI mice were divided into five groups of 15. The groups consisted of a control group, experimental groups A and B, which received METH (10 mg/kg/day) intraperitoneally for 2 and 14 consecutive days, respectively and two sham groups A and B, which only received saline. After the last injection, 10 international units pregnant mare serum gonadotropin (IU PMSG) and 10 IU human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) were administered intraperitoneally for induction of ovulation. Then, all the mice were sacrificed to aspirate their oocytes for further evaluation. In vitro fertilization (IVF) was done by using mature oocytes and embryo development was investigated up to the blastocyst stage. Data was analyzed using SPSS and non-parametric Mann-Whitney test.Results: The number of fragmented oocytes in experimental group A was significantly increased in comparison with experimental group B and control group (P<0.05). Also there were significant differences in the number of unfertilized oocytes and early cleavage stage embryos in experimental group B in comparison with other groups that indicates the reduction of fertilization rate in experimental group B (P<0.05).Conclusion: Short-term administration of METH in mice can affect oocyte quality but had no effect on early embryo development, while the long-term administration may affect oocyte and embryo development in early cleavage stage.

Objectives: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrine disorder in women of reproductive age. Polycystic ovary (PCO) is a criterion for PCOS. Several animal models of polycystic ovary morphology (PCOM) are developed in order to study PCOS aspects. The present study aimed to develop a polycystic ovarian model in mice.Materials and Methods: Thirty-four young adult female mice were divided equally into estradiol valerate (EV) treated and control groups. Mice in experimental group (n=18) received a single dose injection of EV (IM, 4 mg/kg). Weight and fertility rate of all mice were recorded. Morphology of ovarian follicles was assessed too. Chi-square and independent t test were used for comparison between groups. P value less than 0.05 was considered as significant level.Results: After 60 days, the weight of EV-treated mice was significantly lower than control (P<0.04) and the experimental group did not show any significant changes in their body weight. Fertility rate in experimental group was significantly lower (P<0.001) than the other group. Follicle count showed that the number of preovulatory follicles and corpora lutea were lower (P<0.001) and atretic follicles were higher (P<0.001) significantly in EV-treated group in comparison to control. However, there were no significant differences in the number of primary, preantral and antral follicles between two groups.Conclusion: The polycystic ovary morphology can be induced in adult mice with a single dose of EV. This model may help to improve our knowledge on all aspects of PCOS.

Objectives: Mycoplasma hominis (M. hominis) infection is considered as one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. Antibodies against sperm can influence fertilization through different mechanisms. These two factors can affect women’s fertility status. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between infection with genital M. hominis and the presence of antisperm antibodies (ASA).Materials and Methods: Case-control study was conducted using 50 patients with primary or secondary infertility as a case group and 50 healthy women as a control group in Sarem’s women hospital. DNA was extracted from urine samples and the presence of M. hominis (past infection) was determined by PCR. In addition, the presence of antibody against M. hominis in the serum (current infection) was assessed by ELISA. On the other hand, the presence of ASA was further evaluated by IgG-MAR test in the serum.Results: Our results clearly demonstrated that the prevalence of M. hominis (evaluated by PCR) in the two groups was not significantly different. Furthermore, the presence of antibodies against M. hominis and sperm was not significantly different as compared between fertile and infertile women.Conclusion: The current study demonstrated that there is no distinct association between current or past infection with M. hominis and the levels of antisperm antibody in women with unexplained infertility. This result can be due to limitation in antiserum used in IgG-MAR test to recognize all ASA in serum of infertile women.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of factors affecting postpartum depression in women in the city of Qom, Iran.Materials and Methods: This study was a survey research. The research population included all women who were within 4 weeks postpartum and referred to health centers in Qom. The sample consisted of 120 subjects who were selected by convenience sampling method. Edinburgh Postnatal Depression was the research tool. Once collected, the data were extracted and analyzed using SPSS software and t test.Results: Based on the findings, the prevalence of depression among the studied population in Qom was 40.83%. Results showed that wanted or unwanted pregnancy has significant relation to depression while variables such as infants’ gender, the nulliparous or pluriparous and mode of delivery did not significantly affect postpartum depression.Conclusion: The results of the research showed that the rate of postpartum depression in the city of Qom is significantly higher than usual. In order to prevent the multiple consequences of the postpartum disorder in families and societies, active measures must be taken to put awareness- raising plans about the treatment of this disorder high on the agenda of health centers. It is also recommended to make strenuous efforts to hold workshops on the prevention of unwanted pregnancies which have made significant differences in this study.

Objectives: Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most common malignancy of the female reproductive system. To date, no good marker for screening or disease monitoring of EC is available. The objective of this study was to investigate the sensitivity and specificity of CA125 and human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) in detection of EC.Materials and Methods: This case-control study was carried out on 40 women with EC and 60 women without cancer. Serum samples were prospectively obtained from all patients. Cut-off points for HE4 and CA125 were considered 70 pmol/L and 35 U/mL, respectively. The level of statistical significance is set at P<0.05.Results: The ROC-AUC, for HE4 was 0.82 and CA125 was 0.73 and for combination of HE4 and CA125 was 0.89. Compared to CA125, HE4 had higher sensitivity (57.7% vs.40%), equal specificity (93.3% vs.95%), equal positive predictive value (PPV) (85% vs.84.2%) and higher negative predictive value (NPV) (76.71% vs.70.37%) and in combination of two tumor markers sensitivity, specificity, PPV and NPV were 62.5%, 93.3%, 86.2% and 78.9%, respectively. It was clear that combination of two markers had higher sensitivity and higher NPV to detect EC, than each marker alone. HE4 and CA125 were significantly elevated in EC compared to controls (P<0.001). There was significant correlation between median HE4 and age of the patients (r=0.48, P=0.002) and stage of the disease (r=0.50, P=0.001). There was no significant correlation between CA125 and age, stage or grade of the disease (P=0.39, P=0.08 and P=0.9, respectively).Conclusion: Our study showed that serum HE4 levels alone and in combination with CA125 are sensitive markers in diagnosing EC.

Objectives: These days, infertility is one of the most common diseases in the community involving 10%-15% of the couples. One method of infertility treatment is assisted reproductive technology (ART). Recently studies have shown that local endometrial injury in patients treated with in vitro fertilization (IVF) cause treatment failure and subsequently decrease the implantation rates. The aim of this study was to show the direct relationship between local endometrial injury and increasing recurrent implantation failure (RIF).Materials and Methods: Our study populations included patients that experienced at least two or more RIFs during IVF which was performed in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences.Results: In this study, 76 patients that experienced at least two or more RIFs during IVF were studied. Any local endometrial injury was examined in regard to its affect on the pregnancy rate. The results showed that there is not any relationship between the mean duration of infertility with and without endometrial trauma and IVF in patients.Conclusion: Seven patients with endometrial trauma and 6 patients without endometrial trauma before IVF showed positive bHCG test. Meanwhile there were not significant differences between bHCG test in patients with and without local endometrial injury before IVF. Significant correlation was not found between the incidences of pregnancy after IVF in patients with other parameters.

Objectives: Medicinal aromatic herbs have been used traditionally as a strong source of natural drugs for many centuries. This work aimed to compare the antibacterial activity of Ziziphora clinopodioides’ essential oils and four standard antibiotics against some pathogenic bacteria isolated from women’s urogenital tract infections in order to replace natural antibacterial compounds from plant instead of synthetic chemical antibiotics.Materials and Methods: To evaluate the antibacterial effects of essential oils of mentioned plant and standard antibiotics including nalidixic acid, vancomycin, ceftizoxime and tetracycline according to the guideline of the standard disk diffusion method test constituted by the CLSI (formerly NCCLS) and executed on each isolate using Mueller-Hinton agar medium.Results: The results indicated that the essential oils of Ziziphora clinopodioides L. exhibited resistance to moderate and sensitive antibacterial activity on the tested bacteria with inhibition zone (IZ) value ranging from 5±0.1 mm to 29.1±±0.2 mm. Also at 5% level of confidence; there was no significant difference between antibacterial effect of essential oils of mentioned plants and the tested standard antibiotics.Conclusion: The present study showed that the Ziziphora clinopodioides L. essential oils’ was effective on many tested bacteria as compared to the standard antibiotics and like other species of Ziziphora has a great potency of being used as natural antimicrobial drug; therefore it can be used against bacteria causing urogenital tract infections in women. It is suggested that in this connection supplementary study should be done on experimental animal models.

Introduction: Fetal neck masses are rare. In general, cystic hygroma is the most frequent form of fetal neck masses. It is essential to differentiate between different pathologies since this will affect prenatal counselling, antenatal and postnatal management. We aimed to present a case of cervical lymphangioma who was referred to our perinatology outpatient clinic with a diagnosis of an occipital encephalocele.Case Presentation: A 26-year-old nulliparous woman was referred to our perinatology clinic at 38 weeks’ gestation with an ultrasound diagnosis of occipital encephalocele so that postnatal surgery could be planned at our hospital. During obstetric ultrasonography examination, we identified a 4.7×4.5 cm, multiloculated cystic mass on the left lateral side of the fetal neck. The provisional diagnosis was lymphangioma. Fetal magnetic resonance (MR) revealed a multiloculated cystic mass with smooth counters of 4.5×3.5×3.0 cm in size, originating from the soft tissues of the left side of the neck and it was not connected with the cervical spinal canal. The pathology report confirmed cervical lymphangioma.Conclusions: We would like to highlight the importance of differential diagnosis and follow up scans for any neck mass identified during scan to reach the final accurate diagnosis. This will enable that fetal neck masses could be diagnosed correctly in a more cautious manner.

Introduction: Double aortic arch is a rare cardiac anomaly that constitutes 1% to 3% of all congenital anomalies. Prenatal diagnoses of such conditions are rare.Case Presentation: We present a case of double aortic arch with compression of the trachea that was diagnosed during the 20th week of gestation. The baby was delivered during the 29th week of gestation via cesarean and the diagnosis was confirmed with computerized tomography (CT) angiography. Later, a surgical repair was undertaken; however, the patient succumbed to pulmonary complications 3 months after delivery.Conclusions: Aortic arch anomalies are a rare and diverse group of congenital heart anomalies. Prenatal diagnosis is possible and beneficial in cases with tracheal compression as it allows for early intervention after birth.