Women lag men in medical research funds and faculty posts

Even though women now make up half of all U.S. medical school graduates, they remain much less likely than men to get research funding or become professors in medicine, two studies suggest.

Nationwide, men outnumbered women on U.S. medical school faculties by two to one last year, and men edged out women by almost five to one in achieving senior posts as full professors, according to one of the studies published in JAMA.

Women also appear to receive far less financial support for biomedical research early in their academic careers, a separate study of applications to one New England foundation suggests.

The studies serve as a reminder that the potential of women in medicine, like their peers in many other professions, has not been fully realized, Dr. Carrie Bylington of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City argues in an accompanying editorial. To represent the diverse communities they serve, academic medical centers should champion diversity among their students, faculty and staff, she writes.

"At least two major roadblocks lead to gender disparities in academic medicine," said Dr. Anupam Jena, a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"First, institutional resources, mentorship and biases generally favor men over women, hence making it harder for women in academic medicine to be as productive in research," Jena, lead author of the study of medical school faculties, said by email.

US Air Force vet’s photo of soldiers breast-feeding goes viral

When Tara Ruby was on active duty in the U.S. Air Force from 1997 to 2001, the military didn’t offer support for breast-feeding mothers. To show how far the military has come— the Fort Bliss Army Post has a new nursing room— she recently posted a photo on social media of 10 active duty soldiers breastfeeding their babies.

The photo, which has received over 11,400 likes on Ruby’s Facebook page and over 12,300 likes from Breast-feeding in Combat Boots’ Facebook page, shows the women wearing boots and camouflage as they feed their children.

Ruby, now a professional photographer in El Paso, Texas, sought active duty mothers using the Army Public Health Center’s Pregnancy and Postpartum Physical Training (P3T) Program, which aims to help soldiers maintain physical fitness levels during and after pregnancy. According to their website, P3T draws exercise recommendations from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.  She also worked with Breast-feeding in Combat Boots, a veteran-owned and operated support group.

"I thought it was be nice to offer some photographs as an additional show of support," Ruby told CNN. "Seeing a picture like that helps mothers understand they can be an active soldier and provide support to their children."

According to CNN, Fort Bliss Public Affairs and Garrison Command approved the shoot. A U.S. Army spokesman told CNN there is no policy that prevents women from breast-feeding in uniform as long as they “maintain professional standards.”

On Thursday, Ruby posted the photo on her Facebook page and it was removed, for reasons Ruby doesn’t know, by Friday morning. It was also removed from other pages that shared the image. Ruby reposted the photo on Friday morning, thanking supporters.

"Juggling the tasks and expectations of a soldier, plus providing for their own in the best way they possibly can, makes these ladies even stronger for it,” she wrote on her wall.

6 ways you’re making your menopause symptoms worse

Hate to break it to you, but there's someone screwing you over in the hot-flashes department. Yep, it's you. For starters, we're guessing you don't get your menopause info from an expert source. Your doctor means well, we promise, but chances are her specialty isn't the Big Change. Your best bet is finding a certified menopause practitioner near you at menopause.org. (Looking for ways to ease your menopause symptoms? Then check out The Natural Menopause Solutionfor simple, effective tips.)

In the meantime, you can set yourself up for success by avoiding the all-too-common pitfalls below. Here are some of the major menopause no-nos you might be guilty of:

1. You're not telling your doc about your supplements.

And who could blame you? In a recent North American Menopause Society study, some 53 percent of women said they've tried everything from vitamins and herbal supplements to acupuncture and massage to help with hot flashes, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and other disruptive menopause symptoms.

The issue is that it's tricky to know just what you're getting, since supplements aren't FDA regulated, said ob-gyn Dr. Kathryn Macaulay, director of the Menopause Health Program at the University of California–San Diego and a clinical professor of reproductive medicine at the UCSD Medical Center.

That doesn't mean they can't help; black cohosh, for example, has some pretty substantial research behind its ability to ward off hot flashes. But she recommends telling your doctor what you're trying, so at the very least she can direct you toward a reputable brand.

MORE: This Is What It's Really Like To Be In A Sexless Marriage

2. You're ignoring the basics.

How much sleep did you get last night? How much water have you been drinking? How off the wall is your stress right now? There's nothing groundbreaking about age-old health wisdom about eating your veggies, getting enough sleep, and taking time to chill, but sticking to the fundamentals can dramatically reduce the severity of your most exhausting menopause symptoms.

Macaulay suggested preparing ahead of time: Get close to your ideal body weight before you enter the menopause home stretch. Metabolism and hormonal changes make it that much harder to whittle your middle after menopause. (Take a look at this new, easy science-backed way to lose 10 pounds—no dieting or exercising required.)

3. You're banking on those hot flashes passing—and quickly.

"Sure, I'm drowning in my own sweat," you think, "but I can put up with a year of this, I'm tough!" Sorry to burst your perspiring bubble, but you're likely to be facing more than a yearlong sentence: Hot flashes actually seem to last more like seven years (seriously, sorry). We get that you want to look tough—it's just a little sweat right?!—but seven years is a long time to be carrying around that battery-operated fan you've got in your purse.

If hot flashes are causing big-time disruption—in sleep and in your day-to-day, once-sweat-free life—stop waiting it out and look into treatment options, says Macaulay.

Vaginal mesh slings for incontinence fail in about 3 percent

About one in 30 women who get a common type of vaginal surgery to address urinary incontinence will need repeat procedures within 10 years to remove or replace mesh slings inserted to prevent leaking urine, a study finds.

This risk is considered low, the authors note.

Patients fared best when they had slings inserted by surgeons who did the highest volume of these procedures. These patients were 37 percent less likely to need repeat procedures, the study found.

Women should make sure they know what their surgeon's past experience has been, lead researcher Dr. Blayne Welk of Western University in London, Ontario said in an email.

Millions of women develop urinary stress incontinence when muscles and tissues that support the bladder weaken. Simple actions such as coughing, running or lifting heavy objects can put pressure on the bladder and cause urine to leak. The risk increases with age, obesity, and multiple vaginal childbirths.

In the U.S., an estimated one in seven women will get surgery for urinary stress incontinence during their lifetime, Welk and colleagues note in JAMA Surgery.

While long-term follow up of some of the first women to get the slings found few complications after more than 17 years, some previous research has linked the devices to chronic pain, fistulas, and mesh erosions into the urethra or vagina, the researchers note.

Treatment of these complications can require repeat surgeries to remove or replace the devices, a possibility that regulators in the U.S. and Canada have highlighted in warnings to consumers and advised surgeons to explain to patients considering these procedures. In the U.S., more than 50,000 women have joined class action lawsuits related to complications with vaginal mesh.

Given the warnings, Welk and colleagues set out to examine reoperation rates and to assess how the surgeon's training and experience might influence the results. Overall, they looked at data on 59,887 women who had mesh slings implanted by nearly 1,000 different surgeons between 2002 and 2012.

After an average follow-up of five years, 1,307 women, or 2.2 percent, had needed a reoperation. However, when women were followed for 10 years, that rate rose to 3.3 percent.

Vaginal estrogen linked to improved sexual health for some women

Among women who don’t take hormonal replacement therapy (HRT) after menopause, and even some who do, vaginally applied estrogen may help ease dryness and painful intercourse, a small U.S. study suggests. 

Many women have been reluctant to use HRT to ease menopause symptoms since 2002, when the federally-funded Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study linked the treatments containing man-made versions of the female hormones estrogen and progestin to an increased risk of breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes.

For the current study, researchers compared how well locally-applied estrogens helped relieve vaginal pain and dryness among women who stopped HRT after the WHI results came out, as well as among women who stayed on HRT or resumed treatment after a temporary halt.

Women were most likely to use the vaginal estrogen if they reported pain during sex, and if they had stopped HRT, the study found.

Among the women who abandoned HRT and never went back, the participants using vaginal estrogen reported significantly higher satisfaction with their sex lives, the study published in Menopause also found.

“We would expect that the women with the most severe symptoms would show the greatest benefit and the group that stopped estrogen/hormone use after the WHI would be expected to develop symptoms and benefited the most,” senior study author Dr. Michelle Warren, of Columbia University Medical Center and the Center for Menopause, Hormonal Disorders and Women’s Health in New York, said by email.

Women go through menopause when they stop menstruating, which typically happens between ages 45 and 55. As the ovaries curb production of the hormones estrogen and progesterone in the years leading up to menopause and afterwards, women can experience symptoms ranging from irregular periods and vaginal dryness to mood swings and insomnia.

Vaginal dryness and painful intercourse are symptoms thought to result from atrophy of vaginal tissues because of falling estrogen levels. HRT has been shown to improve these symptoms by rebuilding vaginal walls.

Child death rates cut by half, but U.N. target missed

LONDON –  Children are half as likely to die before their fifth birthday now than they were in 1990, researchers said on Wednesday, but a United Nations target has not been met.

Of all under-five deaths, almost half occur during a baby's first four weeks, said a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Bank and United Nations, with one million babies dying per year on the first day of life.

"In order to get that further down, we need to focus on neonatal mortality, said Flavia Bustreo, the WHO's assistant director general.

This makes early interventions by healthcare professionals to tackle killers like asphyxia and sepsis critical, as well as encouraging breastfeeding and early immunisations, Bustreo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The report came as leaders prepare to meet in New York later this month to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new plan of action for ending poverty.

Covering the next 15 years, the SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expire this year.

One of the MDGs was to cut the death rate of under-fives by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. The rate fell by 53 percent, according to Wednesday's report.

"We have to acknowledge tremendous global progress," said Geeta Rao Gupta, deputy executive director of the United Nations' children's fund (UNICEF)."

"But the far too large number of children still dying from preventable causes before their fifth birthday ... should impel us to redouble our efforts to do what we know needs to be done."

Nearly half of all under-five deaths are associated with malnutrition, said the study, which also said the rate of improvement is accelerating, with child mortality falling quicker since the millennium than it did in the 1990s.

Under-fives in sub-Saharan Africa are 12 times more likely to die than those in rich countries. Nevertheless, many poor African countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania, hit the two-thirds target.

"We know how to prevent unnecessary newborn mortality," said the WHO's Bustreo. "Quality care around the time of childbirth ... can save thousands of lives every year."