Vitamin D receptor gene polymorphism and bone metabolism during low-dose oral contraceptive use in young women.

With the aim to determine whether bone metabolism in young women using low-dose oral contraception is influenced by vitamin D receptor (VDR) genotype, we designed the prospective clinical study of 41 healthy women aged 20-27 years. Twenty-one women of the study group were prescribed an oral contraceptive (30 microg ethynyl estradiol and 150 microg levonorgestrel) and 20 women of the control group a nonhormonal contraceptive or none. Biochemical markers of bone metabolism (bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, osteocalcin, deoxypyridinoline) and VDR genotype, using BsmI endonuclease, were determined.

Women in difficult circumstances: war victims and refugees.

The majority of problems that women are confronting today originate from a lack of respect for human and reproductive rights. Escalating war crises are producing an enormous number of civilian victims, of whom women and children comprise the major part. Rape used as a war tactic in Bosnia has proven to be a very powerful tool.

Initiation of contraception postpartum.

In this case-control study, we compared 97 cases who became pregnant within one year postpartum and underwent an induced abortion to 97 non-pregnant controls who were postpartum for a similar time interval. Two percent of cases conceived when fully breastfeeding and amenorrhoeic. A logistic model was used to identify risk factors for an unwanted pregnancy early postpartum.

[Characteristics of patients with laparoscopically verified pelvic inflammation].

Comparing the characteristics of the two groups young women: one with laparoscopically confirmed pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and the other with no PID (control group) but corresponding to the first group by age, marital status and number of pregnancies, it has been found that the patients with PID are below 25 years of age, have a lower degree of education (p less than 0.05), and 25.5% of them do not use any contraceptive method (p less than 0.