Pregnancy history may be tied to Alzheimer's disease
Seoul, July 22 : Women, take note. Your history of pregnancy may affect the risk of Alzheimer's disease decades later, a new study has found.
The study, published in journal Neurology, found that women who give birth to five or more children may be more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than women who have fewer births.
"Estrogen levels double by the eighth week of pregnancy before climbing to up to 40 times the normal peak level," said co-author Ki Woong Kim frrom the Seoul National University.
"If these results are confirmed in other populations, it is possible that these findings could lead to the development of hormone-based preventive strategies for Alzheimer's disease based on the hormonal changes in the first trimester of pregnancy," Kim added.
For the study, the researchers combined the data from two independent population-based studies with a total of 3,549 women.
Women -- who were an average age of about 71 at the start of the study -- provided information on their reproductive history. They took the diagnostic examination after an average of 46 years from their first childbirth.
During that time, the participants took tests of their memory and thinking skills to see whether they had developed Alzheimer's disease or its precursor, mild cognitive impairment.
The study found that a total of 118 women developed Alzheimer's disease and 896 women developed mild cognitive impairment.
The researchers also found that women who had given birth to five or more children were 70 per cent more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than women who gave birth to fewer children.
Women who had experienced an incomplete pregnancy were about half as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease as women who had never had an incomplete pregnancy.
Of the 2,375 women who had an incomplete pregnancy, 47 developed Alzheimer's disease, compared to 71 of the 1,174 women who never had an incomplete pregnancy, they added.
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MP: 7-year-old girl raped and murdered; minor relative detained
Barwani (MP), Jan 28 (PTI) Police on Wednesday detained a 17-year-old relative of a seven-year-old girl in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for allegedly raping her and killing her by throwing her into a canal, a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Jagdish Dawar told reporters that the body of the child was recovered from the Indira Sagar Canal on January 26, following information from residents of a village in the Rajpur police station area of the district.
He said the post-mortem report concluded severe injuries to the girl’s private parts and attributed her death to drowning.
Dawar said a 17-year-old boy, a close relative of the girl, has been detained in connection with the rape-murder.
The teenager told the police that he kidnapped the girl from her home on the night of January 25 while her family members were asleep, took her to a nearby canal and raped her, according to the official.
When the girl started screaming during the sexual assault, the minor boy allegedly threw her into the canal, with the intention of killing her. The child drowned in the water body, the official said.
The detained minor will be produced in a juvenile court.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and an investigation is underway, he added.
