Swaddling babies incorrectly can cause them hip problems, doctors warn

Parents have been turning to the old-fashioned practice in order to settle their babies and help them sleep better. Swaddling, which involves wrapping the baby in sheets or blankets with their legs out straight and arms pinned so that they cannot move, has been shown to induce sleep and soothe excessive crying and colic. But, say doctors who specialise in orthopaedics, evidence shows that the practice increases the risk of developmental hip abnormalities. Professor Nicholas Clarke of Southampton University hospital writes in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood that one in five babies are born with a hip abnormality, perhaps because of a breech birth or family history. Although these can resolve unaided, swaddling can delay it.
Clarke says that parents should be advised on "safe swaddling" if their babies are at risk of hip development problems. "In order to allow for healthy hip development, legs should be able to bend up and out at the hips. This position allows for natural development of the hip joints. The babies' legs should not be tightly wrapped in extension and pressed together."

Swaddling can cause hip problems The Guardian 28 October 2013

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority launches consultation

UK researchers are working on new medical techniques that could allow women to avoid passing on genetically inherited mitochondrial diseases to their children. These techniques, which are IVF-based, offer options for affected families. However they are also at the cutting edge, both of science and of ethics. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has launched a public consultation to gather views on the social and ethical impact of making these techniques available to patients. Visit http://mitochondria.hfea.gov.uk/mitochondria/ to explore the issues and complete an online consultation. The consultation is open from 17 September to 7th December 2012.

FSA reviewing advice to pregnant women about cats and rare meat

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is going to review its advice to pregnant women and other groups of people who could be at risk of health problems as a result of being infected with toxoplasma, a microscopic parasite carried by cats and transmitted in contaminated food.
The FSA's chief scientist, Andrew Wadge, said that a report by the FSA's Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food found that further research is needed to establish how toxoplasma is spreading to people from cats.
Wednesday 5th September 2012 www.independent.co.uk

Birth defects more common in IVF babies

Babies conceived through certain fertility treatment techniques are about one-third more likely to have a birth defect than babies conceived without any extra help from technology, according to a review of several dozen studies. However, the researchers - whose findings were published in the journal ‘Fertility and Sterility’ - did not determine why fertility treatments are tied to a higher risk of birth defects or whether the technology is even responsible. It's possible that the same reasons people have trouble conceiving and seek out fertility treatment could influence their increased risk of having a baby with a birth defect. It's also possible that the IVF techniques themselves, the jostling and handling of the embryos, or the drugs that go along with fertility treatment, could be involved. A third theory is that birth defects only appear to be more common in babies conceived through fertility treatments because they're monitored more closely than other babies. For more than 124,000 children born through IVF or using ICSI, in which a single sperm is injected directly into the egg, the risk of having a birth defect was found to be 37 percent higher than that of the other children.

uk.reuters.com20/4/12