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According to a recent report from the NCHS Data Brief, out-of-hospital births, while still rare, are on the rise and at their highest level since 1975. If the number of out-of-hospital births continues to increase, changes to resource allocation, clinician training, and healthcare costs are expected.

A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics is raising concern about a potential association between use of acetaminophen in pregnancy and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in offspring. But the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) is urging caution in interpretation and application of the findings, noting that the results relate to long-term use of acetaminophen, which is not typical in pregnancy, and association does not necessarily equal causation.

According to a new study in Tobacco Control, women exposed to secondhand smoking (SHS), particularly those with no history of smoking, have a higher risk of spontaneous abortions, ectopic pregnancies, and stillbirths than women with no such exposure.

A study by Canadian researchers shows that preventive oophorectomy reduces risk of ovarian, fallopian tube, or peritoneal cancer by 80% in women who have BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. Published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, the report also documented a 77% reduction in all-cause mortality.

Although the passage and politics surrounding implementation of the ACA have been tumultuous, it seems certain for now that the law will stand at least until 2016 if not permanently and our practices will have to change, in some ways for the better.

The costs to medical practices for implementing the International Classification of Diseases-10th Revision (ICD-10) coding system have been grossly underestimated, according to a recent study by Nachimson Advisors for the American Medical Association (AMA). The association is calling for a delay in the October 1, 2014, ICD-10 go-live date in order to give practices more time to prepare for the financial and administrative requirements.

Researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, prospectively investigated stroke risk among 10,876 male and 19,278 female patients with type 2 diabetes. The goal of the study, which appeared in the journal Diabetologia, was to better understand the relationship between glycemic control and stroke risk. The researchers note that more women than men tend to die from stroke in developed countries. In 2010 in the United States, 77,109 women and 52,367 men died from stroke, according to the study.

Girls who become pregnant when they are aged younger than 15 years are more likely than slightly older women to have much older sexual partners, to not use contraception the first time they have sex, and to be Hispanic or black, suggesting that they may be particularly vulnerable to relationships with unequal power.

A study scheduled to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 66th annual meeting in April suggests a possible connection between use of hormonal contraception and risk of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Massively parallel sequencing of maternal cell-free DNA (cfDNA testing) has been shown better at predicting fetal aneuploidies than standard screening in a new study among a general obstetric population. Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the report by the CARE Study group was funded by Illumina.

Time-lapse photography applied to embryo development is commonly called morphokinetics, because it combines the morphological criteria that are typically used for embryo grading/evaluation with the kinetics of development for each embryo at certain predefined checkpoints.