Use of pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation: analysis of pregnant and postpartum Medicaid enrollees.

Background: The Affordable Care Act requires state Medicaid programs to cover pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation without cost sharing for pregnant women. Little is known about use of these pharmacotherapies among Medicaid-enrolled women.

Purpose: To describe the prevalence of prescription fills for smoking-cessation pharmacotherapies during pregnancy and postpartum among Medicaid-enrolled women and to examine whether certain pregnancy complications or copayments are associated with prescription fills.

Therapeutic management, delivery, and postpartum risk assessment and screening in gestational diabetes.

Objectives: We focused on four questions: What are the risks and benefits of an oral diabetes agent (i.e., glyburide), as compared to all types of insulin, for gestational diabetes? What is the evidence that elective labor induction, cesarean delivery, or timing of induction is associated with benefits or harm to the mother and neonate? What risk factors are associated with the development of type 2 diabetes after gestational diabetes? What are the performance characteristics of diagnostic tests for type 2 diabetes in women with gestational diabetes?

Data Sources: We searched electronic databases for studies published through January 2007.

Thyroid disease in pregnancy.

Twenty-seven million Americans are affected with thyroid disease, yet over half of this population remains undiagnosed. Thyroid disease often manifests itself during the reproductive period of a woman's life and is the second most common endocrinopathy that affects women of childbearing age. The physiologic changes of pregnancy can mimic thyroid disease or cause a true remission or exacerbation of underlying disease.

The role of Fas mediated apoptosis in preeclampsia.

It has become clear in recent years that apoptosis is a normal process in trophoblast turnover during pregnancy. Increased trophoblast apoptosis has been observed in the placenta of women with preeclampsia, serum from women with preeclampsia has been found to induce increased trophoblast sensitivity to Fas-mediated apoptosis, and serum from women with preeclampsia has elevated levels of various chemokines, growth factors and cytokines that are involved in the regulation of apoptosis. This review highlights the importance of apoptosis in normal placental development and explores the mechanisms whereby Fas-mediated apoptosis may play a role in conditions related to abnormal placentation, such as preeclampsia.