Late termination of pregnancy: law, policy and decision making in four English fetal medicine units:

Objective: UK abortion law allows terminations for fetal abnormality without gestational limit. This study aimed to understand the decision-making experiences of fetal medicine professionals working within this legal framework.

Design: Qualitative study using semistructured interviews.

Communication of prenatal screening and diagnosis results to primary-care health professionals.

Objective: To describe how prenatal screening and diagnostic test results are communicated to primary care health professionals.

Design: Postal questionnaire.

Setting: Primary care practices across London, East Anglia, the Southeast and Southwest of England.

Prenatal diagnosis of fetal abnormality: psychological effects on women in low-risk pregnancies.

When given an adverse prenatal diagnosis, parents are deeply shocked and experience acute grief. This review considers the psychological outcomes for parents whether they opt to terminate the pregnancy or continue, either through choice or because termination is not an option. It covers the full spectrum of malformation from treatable, through those carrying a risk of significant handicap, to lethal.

Healthy ageing in urban and rural Britain: a comparison of exercise and diet.

Objective: to compare exercise levels, and dietary intake of fruit and vegetables in representative samples of healthy elderly people living in rural and urban areas.

Design: two-wave (screening followed by face-to-face interview) cross-sectional survey.

Setting: rural Cambridgeshire and urban Nottingham, UK.

Aging and lymphocyte subpopulations: whole-blood analysis of immune markers in a large population sample of healthy elderly individuals.

Immune status was determined in a representative sample of elderly people by measuring lymphocyte subsets in whole-blood samples as part of an epidemiological study of the population aged 65 and over. Venepuncture was undertaken in more than 500 individuals who took part in an extensive interview that focused on the lifestyle and psychosocial determinants of healthy aging. The results show that median levels of all lymphocyte subsets tend to decline as the age of the sample increases.