America, get ready for a baby boom. That’s the likelihood anyway, according to a new forecast that suggests a drop in pregnancy and birth rates seen during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic is about to be reversed. “We expect a dramatic rebound soon,” said study lead author Dr. Molly Stout. She is maternal…  read on >  read on >

If you’re planning to get pregnant or already “eating for two,” sticking to a healthy diet may reduce the risk of several common pregnancy complications, researchers say. The new study included nearly 1,900 women who completed diet questionnaires at eight to 13 weeks of pregnancy, along with estimates of what they ate in the previous…  read on >  read on >

You know you’ve done it — stayed up too late and relied on coffee to get through the next day — but new research suggests that caffeine can only do so much. That cup or cups of coffee may keep you awake the following day, but your performance is likely to be subpar, especially when…  read on >  read on >

If your child has both allergies and asthma, it’s imperative to treat their allergies to prevent asthma from worsening as they spend more time outdoors, an expert says. “It’s a time when after a winter when we’re all cooped up inside kids want to go out and play, but the weather is a little variable,”…  read on >  read on >

It’s a scenario fraught with potential conflict: Moving back home as an adult can be tough – on both the grown children and their parents. But it can also come with opportunities, as long as expectations are established early, say some “boomerang kids” who moved back in with mom and/or dad after reaching adulthood. A…  read on >  read on >

A new form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that affects children has been discovered by an international team of researchers. They used advanced genetic techniques to identify 11 such cases in children who had mysterious neurological disorders. Most cases of ALS — also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — are diagnosed in people between the…  read on >  read on >

COVID-19 does not pose a threat to the safety of the United States’ blood supply under existing donor screening guidelines, researchers report. For the study, the investigators reviewed the results of tests for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in nearly 18,000 pools of donated blood, representative of over 257,800 single blood donations that were collected between…  read on >  read on >

Expectant mothers’ high blood pressure heightens kids’ risk of stroke later in life, a Swedish study finds. “Our findings indicate that hypertensive disorders during pregnancy are associated with increased risks of stroke and potentially heart disease in offspring up to the age of 41 years,” said study author Fen Yang, a doctoral student at Karolinska…  read on >  read on >