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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Even infidelity has its price, new research suggests.

Would-be participants in an extramarital affair tend to calculate both the economic and biological benefits beforehand, researchers from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and Bryant University report.

But factors that go into the decision differ slightly between men and women, said study author Bruce Elmslie, an economics professor at UNH.

Women weigh factors including financial stability, education and whether the man is a good candidate to father a child, Elmslie wrote in a university news release.

"These factors do not come into play for men who, overall, are 7 percent more likely to cheat than women," he added. "The likelihood of a man having had an affair increases with age, and reaches a peak when a man is about 55 years old. It then decreases with age. For women, the peak is 45 years old."

"The benefits of female infidelity reduce after the age of 40 because a woman would no longer benefit in terms of improved gene quality from the affair," he said. "Men also experience a reduction of sperm quality around the age of 45, but the reproductive benefits of an affair extend further into a man's lifetime than a woman's."

The study also found:

• Upper-class women are 8 percent more likely to cheat than other women, while men are equally likely to cheat among all economic classes.
• Men who have gone to college are 3 percent less likely to have an affair than other men, while educational status has no impact among women.
• Unhappy men are 13 percent more likely to have an affair, while unhappy women are 10 percent more likely to do so.
• Religious women are 4 percent less likely to cheat, while religion has no impact on whether men have an affair.

The study is published in the current issue of the journal Kyklos.

More information

Genetics might play a role in infidelity, according to the BBC  .

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- More U.S. women are availing themselves of contraceptives services, such as birth control pill prescriptions, according to a new national survey.

From 1995 to 2002, the percentage of American women who said they received contraceptive services rose from 36 percent to 41 percent, according to Jennifer J. Frost, a senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute in New York City, and author of the survey report published in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Overall, the percentage of women receiving all sexual and reproductive health care services --including not only birth control but also such services as STD testing and Pap tests -- remained constant at 74 percent, the survey found.

While the survey findings are encouraging, Frost said, "There's room for improvement."

She examined the 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth to detect patterns and trends in the use of sexual and reproductive health care services. The surveys involved in-home questionnaires of women ages 15 to 44 who were asked if they had received 13 specific services in the past 12 months.

While 76 percent of the respondents said they got services mostly from private health care providers, about one-fourth said they went to a public clinic or other public facility. And those who went to the publicly funded clinics got a broader range of services, according to the survey.

Behind the finding that women overall received more contraceptive services may be another trend, Frost said: That fewer women may be resorting to sterilization, so they need to return to the doctor for birth control pills and other contraceptive options.

The publicly funded clinics, she said, "are filling a big need for low-income women and providing a really important service."

"There are still a lot of women not getting all the services they need," Frost added, citing counseling or advice about contraception as an example.

Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the survey's findings "highlight changes that hopefully will become trends."

Specifically, she was talking about the finding that most women received services from private doctors. "This suggests that private providers are beginning to focus on the contraceptive needs of women," she said.

Private health-care providers should take notes from public clinics, Cullins said. "Since the advent of Title X (a federal program established in 1970 under President Richard Nixon to fund family planning and preventive health services), publicly funded clinics have always focused on contraceptive access, pregnancy testing, and STD-related care."

More information

To learn more about contraception, visit the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc.  

TUESDAY, Aug. 5 (HealthDay News) -- The drug nevirapine -- widely used in developing countries to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to babies -- persists in the breast milk and blood of mothers, a new Stanford University study finds.

That, in turn, could increase the risk that they and their children will develop drug-resistant strains of HIV, the researchers added.

The scientists looked at 32 HIV-positive pregnant women in Zimbabwe who received a single dose of nevirapine when they went into labor. The women had received no other treatment for their infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Two weeks after delivery, more than half of the women still had detectable levels of the drug in their blood, and two-thirds had measurable levels of nevirapine in their breast milk. The longer the drug stays in the body, the more likely it is to develop drug-resistant mutations, the Stanford researchers said.

At the start of the study, none of the women had drug-resistant HIV strains. But two months after they gave birth, one-third of the women had drug-resistant strains in their blood, and 65 percent had drug-resistant strains in their breast milk as well, and could pass those strains to their babies during breast-feeding. Women with more advanced HIV were most likely to develop drug-resistant strains.

The study was expected to be presented Tuesday at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

"In the short term, nevirapine is better than nothing. But in the long term, I'm concerned about conferring resistance. If you're talking about resistance on a broad scale, it could jeopardize future treatment for mothers and infants," principal investigator Dr. David Katzenstein, a professor of infectious diseases, said in a Stanford news release.

Nevirapine and another drug called zidovudine (AZT) play a major role in public health programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in developing nations. Worldwide, the drugs have been used as preventive tools in nearly 900,000 women and infants.

Access to better antitretroviral treatment would reduce the risk of the development of drug-resistant HIV, said study first author Dr. Seble Kassaye, an instructor in infectious diseases.

"[The study] reinforces the need to treat these women with combination therapy, thereby providing better prevention for the infant, while providing better treatment for the mother. Public health efforts should continue to expand combination therapy so that mothers and babies aren't left vulnerable to drug resistance," Kassaye said in the news release.

More information

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has more about HIV and pregnancy  .

(HealthDay News) -- When you head to the doctor for your first prenatal visit after learning that you're pregnant, you should prepare a list of questions.

The American Pregnancy Association offers this list of topics for discussion:

• Is there a phone number or nurse line that I can call when I have questions?
• Who should I call if I start bleeding or cramping?
• What should I consider an emergency?
• Now that I'm pregnant, do I need to make changes to my nutrition, exercise routine and sexual activity?
• How often will I have prenatal visits?