FRIDAY, March 12 (HealthDay News) -- Good news for women who have used birth control pills: A long-term study finds that those who took oral contraceptives at some point in their lives have a lower risk of death than women who never took the "Pill".

"Many women, especially those who used the first generation of oral contraceptives many years ago, are likely to be reassured by our results. However, our findings might not reflect the experience of women using oral contraceptives today, if currently available preparations have a different risk than earlier products," Dr. Philip Hannaford of the University of Aberdeen, leader of a new study, said in a statement.

However, those who took oral contraceptives are at higher risk of violent or accidental death. The authors of the study, which appears online March 12 in the journal BMJ, aren't sure why this that might be so.

Hannaford and colleagues tracked 46,000 women for up to almost 40 years.

In the long term, women who took birth-control pills had a significantly lower risk of death from causes like heart disease and cancers -- even cancers of the uterus and ovary -- compared to other women.

Women younger than 40 who took birth control pills had a slightly higher risk of death, the researchers report.

The authors conclude that, "oral contraception is not significantly associated with an increased long-term risk of death -- indeed a net benefit was apparent."

But, they write, "the balance of risks and benefits may vary globally, depending upon patterns of oral contraception usage and background risk of disease."

More information

For more about birth-control pills, try American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists  .

WEDNESDAY, March 10 (HealthDay News) -- Higher levels of naturally occurring estrogen are tied to a rising risk of stroke in postmenopausal women who aren't on hormone therapy, a new study finds.

U.S. researchers analyzed medical histories and blood samples from more than 9,700 generally healthy postmenopausal white women recruited for an osteoporosis study in the late 1980s. None of the women were on hormone therapy.

During eight years of follow-up, 247 of the women suffered a first stroke. Those women were compared with 243 women who did not have a stroke.

The researchers found that women with the highest levels of estradiol (the most potent naturally occurring estrogen) were 2.3 times more likely to suffer a stroke than those with the lowest levels.

"These results raise the possibility that estradiol levels might be a decision-making tool for health care providers and their female patients when discussing stroke and weighing the option of estrogen therapy," study leader Jennifer Lee, an endocrinologist and epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis Health System, said in a news release.

The researchers also found that women with waist sizes larger than 34 inches had higher estradiol levels and greater stroke risk than those with smaller waist sizes.

"In women with waist girths greater than 34 inches, high estradiol levels conferred a six-fold greater stroke risk over low levels," Lee said. "This might be because fat around the midsection is a source of naturally occurring estrogen. Reducing waist size would be a good defense against future stroke."

The study appears in a recent issue of the Archives of Neurology.

More information

The National Stroke Association has more about women and stroke.

WEDNESDAY, March 10 (HealthDay News) -- Most women who have had a Cesarean delivery can safely have a vaginal delivery later, an expert panel concluded Wednesday.

Surging C-section rates in the United States have worried experts, but the panel said that just because a woman has had a C-section in the past, there's no reason she must have one in subsequent deliveries.

However, current medical practice and fear of lawsuits are major obstacles to encouraging women to have a vaginal delivery after a C-section, the National Institutes of Health-sponsored panel said.

"This meeting was stimulated by the rising Cesarean rate all over this country, as well as the world," Dr. F. Gary Cunningham, Panel and Conference Chairman and Beatrice and Miguel Elias Distinguished Chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said during an press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Women who have one C-section are likely to have more C-sections down the line, Cunningham said.

"This has created some problems," he said." Another problem has been the voices of many women who have bemoaned the fact that they have not had access to care where a trial of labor can be offered as an delivery."

In the United States, the rate of vaginal delivery after a prior Cesarean has dropped from 30 percent to about 10 percent over the past 15 years, Cunningham noted.

To come up with their recommendations, the panel looked at all the available data as well as hearing testimony from doctors, hospital administrators and academics.

Cunningham was careful to note that the panel's findings are not guidelines to be followed, but rather a call to consider alternatives to current practice.

"What we found was the use of a vaginal delivery after Cesarean is certainly a safe alternative for the majority of women who have one prior Cesarean," he said.

There are several major reasons why this choice has been precluded in most hospitals, Cunningham said. "The number of hospitals offering 'trial of labor' is diminished because of the perceived good and bad outcomes that accrue to either the mother or the fetus," he noted.

Although these outcomes are relatively rare, they include a ruptured uterus, and they can be devastating to the mother, Cunningham noted.

In many cases, access to vaginal delivery is not available to these women because of lack of money, as well as doctors' and hospitals' fear of being sued should a complication occur, he added.

In addition, some professional societies, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have guidelines that in some cases are impossible to follow, which have caused many hospitals to shy away from offering vaginal delivery to women who have had a Cesarean delivery, Cunningham said.

For example, the ACOG guidelines require that a surgeon and an anesthesiologist be immediately available when a woman who has had a previous C-section gives birth vaginally.

However, there's no evidence that this type of oversight is necessary or changes outcomes, Cunningham said. In any case, bad outcomes remain rare -- Cunningham estimated that there are about 10 deleterious outcomes for every 100,000 births, vaginal or otherwise.

"That doesn't mean it doesn't apply, just that there is no evidence to support that," he said. "It is a crippling rule for many hospitals and physicians, and is therefore a big driver of the problem. We hope that some of the recommendations cause some of these barriers to be removed."

Yet, there are no reliable means to spot which women are at risk for complications if they opt for vaginal delivery, the panel members noted.

"Pregnancy is something of a risky endeavor," panel member Carol J. Rowland Hogue, the Jules & Uldeen Terry Professor of Maternal and Child Health and director of Women's and Children's Center at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, said during the teleconference.

"Women do suffer complications of pregnancy and their babies do have problems. Fortunately these are rare, but they are irrespective of mode of delivery," she said.

Panel member Dr. Nancy Frances Petit, chairwoman of the division of obstetrics at St. Francis Hospital in Newark, Del., said there is a need for women and their doctors to communicate better to decide which type of delivery is best.

"It is important for the health-care provider to share with the women, first of all, what are the capabilities of the institution that would be participating in her delivery. What is the level of comfort the health-care provider has in terms of her identified risk. It is also important that in return that he or she really takes the opportunity to listen to what the pregnant woman has to say in terms of what her desires truly are," Petit said.

More information

There's more on childbirth at the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

MONDAY, March 8 (HealthDay News) -- Count staying slim as one of the apparent benefits of light-to-moderate alcohol consumption, at least for women.

New research found that women who drank the equivalent of one to two drinks a day were least likely to gain weight -- 30 percent less likely, in fact, than teetotalers.

"Our study results showed that middle-age and older women who have normal body weight initially and consume light-to-moderate amounts of alcohol could maintain their drinking habits without gaining more weight, compared with similar women who did not drink any alcohol," said study author Dr. Lu Wang, an epidemiologist with the division of preventive medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston.

The findings are published in the March 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Previous evidence on the health benefits of alcohol have been mixed. Some research has found that men and, to a lesser extent, women who drink moderately over the long-term have a lower risk for heart disease.

But another study found that even moderate drinking might raise the risk for breast, liver and other cancers in women.

Wang and her colleagues followed 19,220 women, 39 years or older, for an average of 13 years. All participants started the study with a normal body-mass index.

Although, on average, the women all tended to gain weight as time progressed, abstainers gained the most. The amount of weight gained decreased as alcohol consumption went up, the study found.

The researchers said they were unable to draw conclusions about heavy drinkers because there were so few in the study and because these women also tended to smoke, indicating they had very different lifestyles from the other participants.

There could be any number of reasons for the findings, including different ways that women metabolize alcohol, compared with men.

Also, the researchers pointed out, women tend to substitute alcohol for other foods, whereas men tend to simply add alcohol to everything else they're ingesting.

"The impact of alcohol consumption on body weight needs to be considered in the context of energy balance," Wang explained. "Among women, those who regularly consume light-to-moderate alcohol usually have a lower energy intake from non-alcohol sources. On the other hand, alcohol intake tends to induce increased energy expenditure beyond energy contents of the consumed alcohol in women. Taken together, regular alcohol consumption in light-to-moderate amount may lead to a net energy loss among women."

Marianne Grant, a registered dietitian and health educator at the Texas A&M Health Science Center's Coastal Bend Health Education Center in Corpus Christi, said that "it's possible that women who are of healthy weight are not as efficient in metabolizing alcohol."

"But, as always, the message is to enjoy alcohol in moderation," she warned. "Don't go with this as a weight-loss method. The keystones of healthy nutrition still hold."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on maintaining a healthy weight.