Comparison of fundamental voice frequency between menopausal women and women at menacme

OBJECTIVE: To analyze comparatively the speaking fundamental frequency (F0) between women at menacme and women in the climacterium taking or not hormonal replacement therapy. METHODS: A controlled transverse study was conducted on 45 women divided into three groups of 15 women each: Group A (women aged 20-40 years with regular menstrual cycles taking no hormonal contraceptives), Group B (women aged 45-60 years with a duration of menopause of at least 2 years taking 1mg estradiol valerate +90 microg norgestimate per day in a continuous treatment scheme lasting at least 6 months), and Group C (women aged 45-60 years with a duration of menopause of at least 2 years taking no HRT for at least 6 months). The mean age for Groups A, B and C was 30.3, 54.5 and 56.5 years, respectively. The groups were analyzed comparatively regarding F0 values for the sustained vowels /e/ and /i/. RESULTS: Mean F0 for the sustained vowels /e/ and /i/ were 215.97 and 229.89 Hz, 206.21 and 221.79 Hz, 200.71 and 212.79 Hz for Groups A, B and C, respectively, with no significant differences between groups. CONCLUSIONS: Although there is evidence of a probable modulating effect of sex steroids on the larynx, in the present study no significant differences in speaking voice were observed regarding menopause or the use of HRT. The absence of such differences observed in F0 does not necessarily mean that there is no difference in vocal quality between these groups since F0 represents only a vocal parameter.     

Nocturia in women

Nocturia is a common problem in adults, which adversely affects quality of sleep and quality of life. This review summarizes the definition, epidemiology, clinical presentation, pathophysiology, diagnostic evaluation, and the therapeutic options with regard to a female population. Based on the degree of bother nocturia is classified as two or more episodes per night. It is most prevalent in older woman but also affects younger individuals. Voiding during nighttime leads to a disruption of sleep, affecting both sleep onset and maintenance. A clear understanding of its underlying pathophysiology, including diurnal polyuria, nocturnal polyuria, and bladder storage problems is necessary to address symptoms and co-morbid conditions. Diagnostic evaluation includes a detailed patient's history, physical examination, laboratory tests, and a voiding bladder diary. For treatment, tailored lifestyle and behavioural changes are able to decrease bother. In addition some patients profit from pharmacological therapy with antimuscarinic agents and analogue of arginine vasopressin, however this strategy is often restricted by side effects.     

Characteristics of women with hysterectomy

Socio-demographic and health information, including history of hysterectomy/oophorectomy, was obtained in a telephone survey of 2137 women aged 40–52. Subjects were randomly selected from a list of all women with a driver's license in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Results showed that 27.3% of women surveyed reported having had a hysterectomy. Women who had undergone hysterectomy were more often black, less educated, older and heavier; and reported less frequent alcohol consumption, younger age at birth of first child and earlier menarche than women who did not report hysterectomy. Forty-seven precent of blacks reported hysterectomy compared with 24% of whites (P < 0.01) and blacks were significantly younger at surgery than whites (mean age 38.5 vs. 39.6 yr, P < 0.05). Results of multivariate analyses showed age, black race, less than a college education, menarche before age 12 and having no children to be associated with an increased risk of hysterectomy (P < 0.01). Additional multivariate analyses conducted separately for blacks and whites showed that, for whites but not blacks, the higher a woman's educational attainment the less likely she was to report having had a hysterectomy (P < 0.01). Black women with no children more often reported hysterectomy than those wit. children (P < 0.01), but this relationship was not found among whites. These findings show the distribution of hysterectomy in the population to vary by race, education and parity.     

Nonfatal myocardial infarction of women

Five-hundred women admitted for rehabilitation to the State Hospital for Cardiology 1 to 10 months after myocardial infarction were divided into two groups, viz. group I containing patients less than 40 years of age and group II, in which the patients were older than 41 years. Forty-nine per cent of the patients were blue-collar, whereas 22% of them were white-collar workers; 16.5% had a high qualification, 28% were housewives or retired. The leading symptom at admittance, that is in the post-infarction period, was angina pectoris (32% in group I and 73% in group II). Heart failure, rhythm disturbance and hypertension occurred less frequently. The groups considerably differed from each other in the frequency of risk factors. In group I, smoking (81%), use of anticoncipients (41%) and hyperlipoproteinaemia (32%), while in group II hypertension (49%), smoking (45%), obesity (43%) and hyperlipoproteinaemia (41%) were the main risk factors.     

Psychosomatic assessment of hirsute women

Psychiatric illness, psychological distress and illness behavior were investigated in 30 hirsute women and 30 nonhirsute healthy control subjects matched for sociodemographic variables. The majority of patients showed a good psychological adaptation to illness: they did not report significantly more anxiety, depression, and abnormal illness behavior than controls. One-sixth of the patients, however, suffered from a clinically meaningful affective disorder. Further, hirsute patients displayed significantly more hostility and irritable mood than controls (p less than 0.01).     

Sociomedical problems of institutionalised women

The inmates of this institute form a special group in the society which is a reflection of various social pressures and problems. These institutionalised female largely come from poor socioeconomic families and often from families with serious social problems like family disharmony (30%), marital disharmony (20%), poverty (10%), unwedmotherhood (8%), broken homes (51.1%) etc. 90% inmates had one or more morbid conditions. Average number of morbid conditions per inmate was 2.16 at the time of study. Institution which assumes the custody of these women should provide them with medical services towards the rehabilitation and discharge of a healthy, productive, well adjusted citizens. An effective health education programme comprising of nutrition education, sex education, personal hygiene, alcohol and drug abuse should be specifically drafted and should be undertaken for the inmates.     

Early recollections of alcoholic women

Early recollections of 27 alcoholic women were significantly different from those of 30 control subjects. Recollections of alcoholics suggested more disturbed relationships with family and nonfamily members, more references to incidents that elicited fear, anxiety, and other negative affects, and little acceptance of responsibility for what happens in their memories. Utilizations of these results must be viewed cautiously until further investigation with larger and varied samples provides additional supporting evidence.     

Epidemiology of women and depression

BACKGROUND: Depression is the leading cause of disease-related disability among women in the world today. Depression is much more common among women than men, with female/male risk ratios roughly 2:1. AIMS: Recent epidemiological research is reviewed. Implications are suggested for needed future research. RESULTS: The higher prevalence of depression among women than men is due to higher risk of first onset, not to differential persistence or recurrence. Although the gender difference first emerges in puberty, other experiences related to changes in sex hormones (pregnancy, menopause, use of oral contraceptives, and use of hormone replacement therapy) do not significantly influence major depression. These observations suggest that the key to understanding the higher rates of depression among women than men lies in an investigation of the joint effects of biological vulnerabilities and environmental provoking experiences. CONCLUSIONS: Advancing understanding of female depression will require future epidemiologic research to focus on first onsets and to follow incident cohorts of young people through the pubertal transition into young adulthood with fine-grained measures of both sex hormones and gender-related environmental experiences. Experimental interventions aimed at primary prevention by jointly manipulating putative biological and environmental risk factors will likely be needed to adjudicate between contending causal hypotheses regarding the separate and joint effects of interrelated risk factors.     

Reproductive life of Bhoksa women

The paper discusses the reproductive life of 111 ever-married Bhoksa women. The mean age at marriage for women of all ages among Bhoksas, like other tribal populations, is high, unlike the caste populations. The mean ages at first birth of the pooled sample and of the completed fertility cases suggest late and early marriages of the older and younger generations. The maximum number of marriages occur between 15 and 19 years and of first births between 16 and 20 years.

Percentage of reproductive wastage is high in both the lower and higher age groups. Young mothers with low birth orders and older mothers with high birth orders display a high frequency of reproductive wastage. Evidently, both birth order and the age of the mother have effects on reproductive wastage.

Average number of children ever born (including stillbirth but not abortion or miscarriage) per mother of all ages is the highest among Bhoksas of all the studied ethnic groups of India. The Bhoksa, like caste populations, show a high number of children ever born per mother of completed fertility. Quite a high masculinity in the secondary sex ratio, like other mongoloid population is noticed.

The contribution of mortality component to the Total Index of Opportunity for Selection is more than that of the fertility component. Bhoksas conform to the general low range of net reproductive index, which is however greater than unity, suggesting that they are in a growth stage.     

Oral contraceptives and breast cancer among African-american women and white women

The higher incidence of breast cancer among African-American women younger than 50 as compared to white women points to the need to examine exposures that are common among younger women, including exposure to oral contraceptives (OC). We examined patterns of OC use and their associations with breast cancer in a population-based, case-control study conducted in North Carolina between 1993 and 1996. The study population was comprised of 858 cases and 789 controls, of whom 40% were African-American women. There was little evidence that breast cancer was associated with OC use among older women (age >50) of either race, most of whom discontinued use in the distant past. Among younger women, there was a modest, but nonsignificant, increase in risk associated with ever use of OCs for both African-American and white women. There was a trend of increasing risks with more recent use among African-American women, whereas no such trend was apparent for white women. Overall, we found more substantial age differences than race differences in patterns of OC use and the risk of breast cancer associated with their use. The similarity of the associations between African-American and white women suggest that racial differences in breast cancer incidence are not likely to be attributable to OC use.     

Risk factors for injury to women from domestic violence against women

BACKGROUND: Domestic violence is the most common cause of nonfatal injury to women in the United States. To identify risk factors for such injuries, we examined the socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics of women who were victims of domestic violence and the men who injured them. METHODS: We conducted a case-control study at eight large, university-affiliated emergency departments. The 256 intentionally injured women had acute injuries resulting from a physical assault by a male partner. The 659 controls were women treated for other conditions in the emergency department. Information was collected with a standardized questionnaire; no information was obtained directly from the male partners. RESULTS: The 256 intentionally injured women had a total of 434 contusions and abrasions, 89 lacerations, and 41 fractures and dislocations. In a multivariate analysis, the characteristics of the partners that were most closely associated with an increased risk of inflicting injury as a result of domestic violence were alcohol abuse (adjusted relative risk, 3.6; 95 percent confidence interval, 2.2 to 5.9); drug use (adjusted relative risk, 3.5; 95 percent confidence interval, 2.0 to 6.4); intermittent employment (adjusted relative risk, 3.1; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.1 to 8.8); recent unemployment (adjusted relative risk, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.2 to 6.5); having less than a high-school-graduate's education (adjusted relative risk, 2.5; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.4 to 4.4); and being a former husband, estranged husband, or former boyfriend (adjusted relative risk, 3.5; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.5 to 8.3). CONCLUSIONS: Women at greatest risk for injury from domestic violence include those with male partners who abuse alcohol or use drugs, are unemployed or intermittently employed, have less than a high-school-graduate's education, and are former husbands, estranged husbands, or former boyfriends of the women.     

Sister chromatid exchanges in the lymphocytes of control women, pregnant women, and women taking oral contraceptives: effects of cell culture temperature

The incidence of sister chromatid exchange (SCE) was investigated in the lymphocytes of control women, pregnant women, and women using oral contraceptives after culture at 37 degrees C and 40 degrees C. At 37 degrees C, the mean frequency of SCE (MEAN +/- S.E.) was found to be 7.91 +/- 0.30 in pregnant women and 8.53 +/- 0.29 in oral contraceptive users which were significantly higher than the SCE value of 5.56 +/- 0.21 found in control women. Increase in growth temperature to 40 degrees C elevated the SCE frequency to 11.86 +/- 0.44 in pregnant women, 12.76 +/- 0.46 in oral contraceptive users and 7.24 +/- 0.26 in control women. These data indicate that there is a differential induction of SCEs following increased cell culture temperature in the lymphocytes of pregnant women and oral contraceptive users, compared with control women.     

Frequency of curettage in middle-aged women treated with sequential preparations versus untreated women.

Over a 2-month period a register was kept of all dilatation and curettage procedures performed in Frederiksborg County, Denmark, involving women aged 40-59 years. The total recorded was 284. In the same period, questionnaires were sent out to 1200 women in the county who fell within the same, randomly selected age group, to establish the number of women treated with sequential oestrogen/progestogen and those who had been hysterectomized. Based on the results and the total female population in the county, it was calculated that the frequency of the procedure in sequentially-treated women as compared with untreated women was 3.1 times higher in the 55-59 age group. In the 40-54 age group no difference in the incidence of curettage in the sequentially-treated women could be demonstrated.