Physical exercise during postpartum period is beneficial to mothers, and the health gains are abundantly reported. This study characterises the postpartum exercise profile of a group of Nigerian women and reports how their exercise self-efficacies are influenced by sociodemographic characteristics. Participants were women attending the two largest postnatal clinics in Ibadan, south-western Nige...

This paper examines the effects of individual, household and community characteristics on two aspects of fertility among South African women – the age at first conception and the number of pregnancies. We find that education has a significant effect in pushing back the age at first conception and in reducing the number of pregnancies. There is a thresh-hold level of education that must be attai...

OBJECTIVE We used data from the 2010 to 2012 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys to investigate whether the age at menopause is related to age at last delivery. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study of the data for 714 women who became menopausal within the 3 years preceding the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. RESULTS Smoking, exercise, drink...

S chaaf and colleagues 1 have confirmed an increased risk of preterm birth in singleton pregnancies among women with a history of preterm birth in a twin pregnancy. Their comprehensive evaluation of a large dataset should settle the uncertainty that has attended previous smaller studies. 2-6 The risk is real, so now the question is, Why? Why do women who deliver twins preterm more often deliver...

OBJECTIVES To assess recent hospital caesarean section (CS) rates in New South Wales, adjusted for case mix; to quantify the amount of variation that can be explained by case mix differences; and to examine the potential impact on the overall CS rate of reducing variation in practice. DESIGN AND SETTING Population-based record linkage study of births in 81 hospitals in New South Wales, 2009-2...

BACKGROUND Differences in circulating concentrations of antiangiogenic factors sFlt1 and soluble endoglin (sEng) and the pro-angiogenic growth factor PlGF are reported to precede the onset of preeclampsia weeks to months in low-risk pregnant women. The objective of this study was to investigate whether similar changes can be detected in pregnant women at high-risk to develop the syndrome. MET...