Publications

BACKGROUND

When used within 5 days of unprotected sex, emergency contraception (EC) can reduce the risk of pregnancy. Our objective was to explore how often women seeking clinic-based pregnancy testing who do not desire pregnancy might benefit from EC and examine variables associated with patients asking for EC when use is indicated.

STUDY DESIGN

Women seeking pregnancy testing or EC from an inner-city Title-X-funded family planning clinic between January 2011 and June 2012 were invited to complete surveys.

RESULTS

Twenty-seven percent (n=79) of respondents were seeking EC, and 73% (n=215) were seeking pregnancy testing. Of those seeking pregnancy testing, 39% might have benefited from same-day use of EC pills. Women who had never used EC and who had more than one episode of unprotected sex within the past month were less likely to request EC when use was indicated, while single women were more likely to request EC.

CONCLUSIONS

Counseling regarding EC options is particularly important for women seeking same-day pregnancy testing who do not desire pregnancy.

The emergence of new oral anticoagulants is a major development in cardiovascular medicine. In this overview, we sought to evaluate the impact of gender, heart failure, paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF) and diabetes on stroke prevention with warfarin and the new oral anticoagulants by conducting a semisystematic review and meta-analysis including 44,563 patients in recent contemporary Phase III trials. The new oral anticoagulants were superior to warfarin irrespective of gender or the presence of diabetes. For nonparoxysmal AF, event rates are similar with warfarin and new anticoagulants. There is some suggestion of the benefit of new oral anticoagulants in patients with paroxysmal AF. For patients without heart failure, the new drugs are superior, whereas in patients with evidence of heart failure the new drugs were similar to warfarin. In conclusion, new oral anticoagulants are better than warfarin irrespective of gender or the presence of diabetes mellitus. Patients with heart failure and nonparoxysmal AF seem not to gain additional prognostic benefit from new anticoagulants.

Mitra and colleagues analyzed microRNA expression profiles of fibroblasts isolated from ovarian cancer patients, searching for dysregulated microRNAs in the stromal compartment of human cancer. They found that decreased miR-31 and miR-214 and increased miR-155 expression can reprogram normal fibroblasts into tumor-promoting cancer-associated fibroblasts. They identified CCL5, a protumorigenic chemokine that is highly expressed in tumors, as a key target of miR-214, thus showing that microRNA perturbation in the stromal microenvironment can affect tumor growth.