HEALTH EDUCATION: The 37th annual Merriman Summer School will be held in the Falls Hotel, Ennistymon, Co Clare, from August 21st to 28th. This year's theme takes up the challenges and contradictions facing the new Ireland.
The fields to be covered will include healthcare, economics, sport and complementary medicine. Of particular interest will be a talk by Muiris Fitzgerald, professor of medicine at UCD, on the culture and politics of healthcare delivery. Further information is available at: www.merriman.ie
IN THE BONES: Research on siblings of those with osteoarthritis of the knee found they were twice as likely to develop the condition themselves, suggesting genes play a part in its development. The findings are based on a study of 490 patients with severe knee osteoarthritis and 737 of their brothers and sisters over the age of 40 living nearby. Even allowing for important risk factors, such as smoking habits, weight, age and gender, the siblings were still more than twice as likely to have knee osteoarthritis as other patients.
TRAINING PAYS OFF: Researchers from Norway have found that pelvic floor muscle training during pregnancy seems to facilitate labour. The study involved 301 healthy, pregnant women who had not previously given birth, with half the group participating in an intensive pelvic floor training programme during the 20th and 36th week of pregnancy. The other half acted as the control group.
Women in the training group had a lower rate of prolonged labour than the women in the control group, with 24 per cent undelivered after one hour of active pushing, compared with 38 per cent in the control group. According to the authors, intensive training of pelvic floor muscles during pregnancy seem to facilitate rather than obstruct labour, as was previously thought.