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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Alcoholism is associated with delayed childbearing in women, according to a study that compared women's and men's lifetime history of alcohol dependence and their age when they had their first child.

The researchers analyzed data from two groups of Australian twins born between 1893-1964 (3,634 female and 1,880 male twins) and between 1964-1971 (3,381 female and 2,748 male twins).

The results showed that alcoholic women in both groups had delayed onset of childbearing, but alcoholism had little or no effect on men.

The findings are to be published in the November print issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine alcohol's effects on reproductive onset across reproductive development," corresponding author Mary Waldron, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, said in a journal news release.

"Most previous research has examined risks to teens or adults but not both. Our findings highlight a risk associated with AD [alcohol dependence] in women that is not widely recognized -- a risk that has assumed increasing importance given the increased rates of alcohol misuse by women and particularly young women," Waldron said.

Alcohol dependence can cause reproductive dysfunctions for both teen and adult females.

"Reproductive dysfunctions include a range of menstrual disorders, sexual dysfunctions, and pregnancy complications that include spontaneous abortion or miscarriage. Teenagers who drink tend to have disruptions in their menstrual cycle as well as unplanned pregnancies," Waldron said.

The finding that alcohol dependence has more reproduction-related impact on women on men may be because women reach higher blood alcohol concentrations than men while consuming similar amounts of alcohol, the researchers suggested.

"Young women who drink alcohol may want to consider the longer-term consequences for later childbearing," Waldron warned. "If drinking continues or increases to levels of problem use, their ability and/or opportunity to have children may be impaired.

"For women who are already experiencing fertility problems or other reproductive difficulties, the study's findings should warn them not to use alcohol to cope with stress caused by the reproductive problems, because alcohol would likely make the reproductive problems worse, as well as carrying risks of possible alcohol abuse or dependence," added Sharon C. Wilsnack, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the department of clinical neuroscience at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more about women and alcohol.

MONDAY, Aug. 11 (HealthDay News) -- People who've exchanged wedding vows tend to be healthier than their single, divorced or widowed peers, but new research shows that health gap may be narrowing.

Interviews with today's never-married men suggest they are healthier than never-married guys were three decades ago, researchers say. And that's helping single males gain some ground, in terms of their health, compared to married people.

"One of the most-often documented facts is that married people are healthier than non-married people, but the difference between married and unmarried people has changed over the past few decades," said the study's lead author, Hui Liu, an assistant professor and sociologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

The findings are in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Liu said there are two theories as to why married people report better health. One is that being married gives you more access to social support and economic resources. The other is that being divorced or widowed hurts health.

"In general, marriage tends to make people healthier, happier and richer, and that's especially true for men," said Scott Wetzler, vice chairman of psychiatry and behavioral science, and head of the "Supporting Healthy Marriage" program at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

But because trends in marriage have changed so dramatically over the past few decades, with more people opting not to marry or marrying at later ages, Liu wanted to assess what, if any, effects these changes might have on physical health.

To analyze these trends, Liu and her colleague, Debra Umberson, reviewed 32 years of data on more than one million Americans from the National Health Interview Survey. Study participants were between the ages of 25 and 80. Health status was self-reported in the survey.

The researchers found that the self-reported health status of never-married adults increased significantly over time. At the same time, the self-reported health status of married women also increased, so the gap between married and never-married women's health stayed about the same. However, never-married men narrowed the health gap between themselves and married men.

"An important potential reason is that never-married men have greater access to social support now than they did in the past. It used to be that having a spouse was important for social support and a social network," explained Liu.

The researchers also found that self-reported health improved for nearly all American blacks, except for those who had been widowed.

People who had been married in the past, including those widowed or divorced, reported declines in their overall health status, according to the study.

"If you get married and then divorced, that will hurt your health," said Liu.

"This study provides confirmation that marriage does tend to make people healthier. They didn't look at the quality of an individual marriage, but that being married is more likely overall to make you happier than not being married," said Wetzler.

More information

To read more about the health effects of marriage, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

TUESDAY, Aug. 5 (HealthDay News) -- A widely used HIV infectivity rate doesn't take into account multiple risk factors, say U.S. researchers who reviewed published data.

The heterosexual infectivity of HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) is often cited as a fixed value of one transmission per 1,000 sexual contacts. However, most studies estimating this value were conducted among stable couples with a low prevalence of risk factors, which can increase the risk of HIV transmission by several to several hundred times, according to Kimberly Powers, of the University of North Carolina, and colleagues.

They reviewed published data on HIV (up to April 2008) in order to estimate the effects of transmission co-factors that can affect the risk of heterosexual HIV transmission.

They found wide variations, with estimates ranging from zero transmissions after more than 100 penile-vaginal contacts in some serodiscordant couples (one partner HIV-positive and one partner HIV-negative), to one transmission for every 3.1 episodes of heterosexual anal intercourse, which is more than 300 times the commonly-cited fixed heterosexual infectivity rate.

Other infectivity differences, expressed as number of transmissions per 1,000 contacts, were:

• 13.2 for uncircumcised susceptible males vs. 5.1 for circumcised males.
• 7.5 for susceptible people with genital ulcer disease vs. 1.5 for those without such disease.
• 3.2 for early-stage index cases, 2.6 for late stage index cases, and 0.7 for mid-stage index cases.

"The use of a single, 'one-size-fits-all' value for the heterosexual infectivity of HIV-1 obscures important differences associated with transmission cofactors. Perhaps more importantly, the particular value of 0001 (i.e., one infection per 1000 contacts between infected and uninfected individuals) that is commonly used seems to represent a lower bound. As such, this value substantially underestimates the infectivity of HIV-1 in many heterosexual contexts...heterosexual infectivity can exceed 01 (one transmission per 10 contacts) for penile-vaginal contact or even 03 (one transmission per three contacts) for penile-anal contact. Claims in both the popular media and the peer-reviewed literature that HIV is very difficult to transmit heterosexually are dangerous in any context where the possibility of HIV exposure exists," the review authors wrote.

"Improved infectivity estimates -- especially more detailed estimates that quantify the amplifying effects of biological cofactors -- will help us to grasp the magnitude of the HIV epidemic, accurately communicate the level of risk involved in heterosexual sex, and identify the best possible intervention strategies for slowing the epidemic's spread," they concluded.

"Infectivity studies are very difficult to conduct, and that few studies exist as a result. Many of the studies producing the published estimates suffered from at least one potential bias. Therefore, while our study documents the considerable heterogeneity of the heterosexual infectivity of HIV-1 and provides some explanations for this heterogeneity, considerable uncertainty remains."?

The findings were expected to be announced at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. The review was published online in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and was expected to be in the September print issue of the journal.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about HIV/AIDS.

THURSDAY, July 31 (HealthDay News) -- The increased risk of poor health outcomes among single infants conceived through assisted fertilization (AF) may be due to causes of infertility rather than the procedure itself, say Norwegian researchers.

In general, single babies conceived using AF have worse health outcomes than spontaneously conceived infants. But this difference is much smaller among women who've conceived both spontaneously and with AF, according the study authors.

They analyzed data on 2,546 women who conceived at least one child spontaneously and another after AF, and compared them to 1.3 million women who conceived spontaneously and 8,229 women who conceived through AF.

The researchers found that AF conceptions were associated with a 25-gram lower mean birth weight, a two-day shorter gestation, a 26 percent increased risk of being small for gestational age, and a 31 percent increased risk of perinatal death.

Among women who had one child spontaneously and another with AF, AF conceptions resulted in babies that were nine grams lighter and that had a 0.6-day shorter gestation. Both babies were almost equally small for gestational age, but the spontaneously conceived baby had an almost three times greater risk of perinatal death than the AF baby.

"Birth weight, gestational age and risks for small gestational age babies, and preterm delivery, did not differ among infants of women who had conceived both spontaneously and after assisted fertilization," Dr. Liv Bente and colleagues concluded in a news release. "The adverse outcomes of assisted fertilization that we noted compared with those in the general population could therefore be attributable to the factors leading to infertility, rather than to factors related to the reproductive technology."

The study was published online July 30 in The Lancet and was expected to be published in an upcoming print issue of the journal.

In an accompanying comment, Dr. Anja Pinborg, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, and colleagues wrote: "Considering that 1 to 4 percent of all newborns in Europe are conceived after assisted reproductive technology (ART), safety concerns are important. Reducing the number of multiple births has made improvements, but we need to gain a better biological understanding of the reasons why infertility and ovarian stimulation may have adverse effects on infant health. Consequently, we have to continuously monitor the short and long-term risks of ART."

More information

The U.S. National Women's Health Information Center has more about infertility.