Word: heart
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that environmental conditions in the womb may have lifelong effects on the fetus is certainly not new. British epidemiologist D.J. Barker first proposed his theory of fetal origins in 1992, arguing that when the fetus doesn't get enough nutrition in utero, for example, an increased risk of future heart disease and diabetes somehow gets "programmed" into his or her development. There wasn't very much data to back Barker's theory at the time, but over the decades, a wealth of animal and human data has suggested it's true. Maternal conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes...
...link between a mother's influenza and her child's cardiac health, physical stature or risk of mental illness? Well, we don't really know. What we do know is that it's probably not the flu virus itself. There is no known biochemical mechanism that links heart disease or other health outcomes to prenatal exposure to flu. And the flu virus, unlike the pathogens that cause herpes, German measles and syphilis, is not teratogenic - that is, it doesn't cause malformations in the fetus, says Dr. Ellen Harrison, the director of obstetrical medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center...
Researchers' best guess is that a flu infection causes stress in the mother, which might in turn affect fetal development. During pregnancy, a woman's heart and lungs are working substantially harder than usual, and her immune system is compromised, so a few infections (like influenza) may potentially become more intense. Although most pregnant women who get the flu survive with no serious problems, they are still more likely than other healthy adults to also develop respiratory failure and secondary bacterial infections like pneumonia - potentially fatal conditions that may require hospitalization and mechanical ventilation. "It is these severe cases that...
Still, the study's authors argue that there are few other immediately obvious alternative hypotheses, given the cluster of outcomes among babies born at certain times. "Why is it that only those born in 1919 showed the spike [in heart disease]?" asks study author Douglas Almond, a professor of economics at Columbia University and a pioneer in applying the fetal-origins theory to economics. "People who were born just before and after the flu should be affected as well." (Read "How to Deal with Swine Flu: Heeding the Mistakes...
...batik designs come straight from the heart of Javanese tradition, but in other respects Indonesia's most feted fashion maestro, 75-year-old Iwan Tirta, is a modernist - responsible for getting batik into the pages of Vogue and onto international catwalks. A Yale graduate destined for legal practice, Tirta switched career paths in the 1960s after his interest in batik was awakened during a research project. Since that time, he has built up an exclusive fashion and homeware label, and contributed to the preservation and advancement of batik-production techniques. Here are some of his inspirations...