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CDC finds some problems on the rise, with no clear explanations. Although the rate of complications during pregnancy has remained unchanged since 1993, the percentage of pregnant women with preexisting conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, has increased, a new study finds. The scientists speculated that the increase was driven by more obese women and more older women having babies. Both obesity and the mother's age have been linked to increased complications during pregnancy and delivery, according to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There's the good news and the bad news," said study co-author Dr. William Callaghan, a senior scientist in the CDC's Maternal and Infant Health Branch in the Division of Reproductive Health. "The good news is that we are seeing some improvements. The bad news is that some of the traditional complications of pregnancy -- hemorrhage and hypertension -- are increasing." Why

'Chemical' programming avoids problems genetic manipulation poses, study finds. Scientists have converted adult cells into embryonic-like stem cells by using chemical programming instead of genetic manipulation. Gene manipulation is an older method that has posed the risk of serious health problems such as cancer, the researchers explained. The ability to make stem cells without genetically altering them could lead to the development of many new types of therapies for a wide range of diseases, including type 1 diabetes and Parkinson's disease, the team noted. "We are very excited about this breakthrough in generating embryonic-like cells from fibroblasts [cells that give rise to connective tissue] without using any genetic material. Scientists have been dreaming about this for years," research leader Sheng Ding, an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., said in a Scripps news release. Ding and his colleagues reprogrammed adult c

Study found safety warnings for kids were missed, could be more prominent. When Laura Bix brought home a bottle of over-the-counter pain relievers recently, she was surprised to find that the bottle did not have a child-resistant cap on it. Bix, the mother of three small children and an assistant professor in the School of Packaging at Michigan State University, knew that one size of any product line can be exempted from the federal requirement for child-resistant closure as long as the warning is "conspicuous" and "prominent" on the label. However, this was not the case with the painkillers Bix had bought. "I thought, 'I'm bringing it into my house, so probably others are bringing it in as well,' " she said. So, Bix conducted a study, published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to see if consumers were seeing and/or remembering these warnings. "Child-resistant labeling is really important, be

Italian studies report fewer heart attacks after procedures. Giving statins just before artery-opening angioplasty procedures reduces the incidence of heart attacks and other problems, even for people who already have been taking the cholesterol-lowering drugs, Italian trials show. It's not the effect that statins have on cholesterol that is responsible for the benefits but rather their ability to reduce inflammation and other problems associated with heart disease, said Dr. Carlo Briguori, a cardiologist at the Clinica Mediterranea in Naples, who was to report the findings Monday at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting, in Orlando, Fla. His study included 688 people who were having the procedure that cardiologists formally call percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), in which angioplasty is performed and a stent is then placed in the artery. None had been taking statins before PCI was scheduled. About half of them were give 40 milligrams of atorvastatin (Lipitor) in