Today's other stories in brief
Relax if you want to get pregnant
Old-fashioned, common sense advice to relax may actually work to help some women get pregnant, doctors said yesterday.
For years, women trying to conceive have been advised by friends and family to stop stressing about it – an idea that not all obstetricians and gynaecologists have embraced.
But research presented at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Atlanta suggests there may be something to it.
Alice Domar, who runs a fertility centre in Boston and also works at Harvard Medical School, found women who took part in a stress management programme while having a second round of assisted fertility treatment had a 160 per cent greater pregnancy rate than women getting IVF alone.
“This study shows that stress management may improve pregnancy rates, minimising the stress of fertility management itself, improving the success rates of IVF procedures, and ultimately, helping to alleviate the emotional burden for women who are facing challenges trying to conceive,” she said.
UL awards highest honour to ethics chairman
The University of Limerick (UL) has awarded one of its highest honours, the University of Limerick President’s Medal, to Dr Kevin Kelleher, assistant national director of Health Protection, HSE and first Chair of the UL research ethics committee.
Speaking at the award ceremony, UL president Prof Don Barry said: “We are fortunate to have such an accomplished individual as Dr Kelleher head up our first Research Ethics Committee. There is no doubt that his work over the past 10 years has made a tremendous contribution to our research faculty. Dr Kelleher has given freely of his time, his esteemed counsel and will forever be regarded as a great friend of UL,” he added.
Dr Kelleher was appointed as the first Chair of the UL Research Ethics Committee (ULREC) in 1999. “The work of the ULREC involved formulating a clear protocol and standardisation across the board to offer researchers benchmarks of acceptable ethical codes of practice,” according to UL.