TAIPEI/BEIJING (Reuters) - Apple Inc is cutting production orders for its plastic-backed iPhone 5C a month after launch, a source familiar with its supply chain said on Wednesday, fueling speculation the cheaper model of its main gadget may have been priced too high.
Apple has asked one of its largest suppliers to increase production of the top-tier 5S, which went on sale at the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported. said. Analyst said this allayed concerns that the cheaper 5C will eat into premium sales and erode margins.
Apple has told manufacturers it will reduce orders for the 5c smartphone in the final three months of the year, the source told Reuters. The company added the 5C to the lineup in September along with the flagship iPhone 5S.
Pegatron Corp, which assembles many of Apple's iPhone 5Cs, had seen orders reduced by less than 20 percent, said the source, who asked not to be identified because the information is sensitive.
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co another major assembly contractor for the 5C, had its orders for the same period reduced by a third, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But at the same time, Apple raised orders for the 5S in the fourth quarter, the newspaper said, quoting two Hon Hai executives.
Analysts said the decision by consumers to spend more on the pricier 5S benefits Apple. The company's shares rose on Wednesday, touching a one-month high above $502. Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley estimated that the iPhone 5S is outselling 5C by 2.5 times to 1.
Canaccord Genuity's "survey work indicates a significantly higher sell-through mix of iPhone 5s versus 5c that should benefit near-term Average Selling Prices and margins," Walkley said.
In the United States, the 5C is $100 cheaper than the premium 5S, which starts at $649 for the 16 GB model.
Spokespersons at Pegatron, Hon Hai and Apple declined to comment.
Analysts and Apple executives have cautioned against reading too much into supply chain adjustments, which are common in the fast-moving electronics industry.
Investors will get some idea of the demand for the two phones when Apple reports its fiscal fourth quarter results later this month. But the iPhones numbers from July-September will include sales of only a month of the new models.
HOLIDAY QUARTER BOOST
Apple is expected to sell 33 million to 36 million iPhones in its fiscal fourth quarter, rising to over 50 million in the typically strong holiday quarter, which will mark the first full quarter of sales of the new iPhones.
The holiday quarter may also feature a new lineup of iPads.
Next week, Apple is expected to introduce a updated version of the tablets that compete with Amazon.com Inc's Kindle Fire and tablets made by Samsung Electronics.
Apple has come under pressure over the past year to bolster sales of its iPhones and iPads and defend its market share against rivals that are rapidly raising capabilities and lowering prices.
The reception for the 5c has been lukewarm in China, which Chief Executive Tim Cook has identified as one of Apple's most important markets. Some local bloggers say the price difference between the 5C and 5S is too narrow.
The price difference could widen next year as Apple is known for cutting prices of older models to drive volume.
"We're not especially concerned with 5C order cuts at this point because they appear to be offset by strong demand and increased production for the 5S, said Brian Colello, analyst with Morningstar said. "As far as emerging markets, the 5C is simply not cheap enough to gain traction with customers that can buy $150 Android devices."
Previously, Apple had said sales for the 5S and 5C in the first three days of their launch in September totalled 9 million, and that demand for the 5S exceeded initial supplies. It did not give separate figures for the 5C and 5S.
Prudential, which does not own Apple shares, forecasts assemblers will ship around 23 million 5C units in the final three months of this year and 10 million in the first three months of next year.
Apple shares rose as high as $502.53 at the open on the Nasdaq on Wednesday and was up 0.6 percent at $501.63 in afternoon trading.
(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta and Soham Chatterjee; Editing by Ryan Woo, Rodney Joyce and David Gregorio)
It's October and the NFL is once again covered head-to-toe in pink accessories and equipment as part of the league's Breast Cancer Awareness initiative.
While fans can also purchase pink clothing and accessories to support the cause, a shockingly small amount of the fans' money is actually going towards cancer research.
According to data obtained from the NFL by Darren Rovell of ESPN, the NFL "takes a 25% royalty from the wholesale price (1/2 retail), donates 90% of royalty to American Cancer Society."
In other words, for every $100 in pink merchandise sold, $12.50 goes to the NFL. Of that, $11.25 goes to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the NFL keeps the rest. The remaining money is then divided up by the company that makes the merchandise (37.5%) and the company that sells the merchandise (50.0%), which is often the NFL and the individual teams.
Then consider that only 71.2% of money the ACS receives goes towards research and cancer programs.
BusinessInsider.com
In the end, after everybody has taken their cut, only 8.01% of money spent on pink NFL merchandise is actually going towards cancer research (see right).
According to the NFL, any money they take in, that is not donated to ACS, is used to cover the costs of their breast cancer awareness program, "A Crucial Catch." The NFL also told Business Insider they donated approximately $1 million per year to the ACS in the first three years of the program.
Still, there are unanswered questions about where the money is going and who is profiting.
The most popular place to purchase pink merchandise is at the NFL's online shop, official team stores, and at the stadiums. In these cases, the NFL and the individual teams are acting as the retailer.
It is unclear how much of the 50% markup for items being sold directly by the NFL and the teams is going to the ACS, if any at all.
Of course, in addition to money, the NFL is also raising awareness for breast cancer and it is hard to put a value on that.
If fans want to show support for their team and for breast cancer awareness, that is great. But if the point is to actually help fight cancer, fans would have a much bigger impact if they skipped the NFL and donated directly to the ACS or other organizations working to fight cancer.
Our solar system is almost 5 billion years old (4.6, really) and we haven't yet had any indication that there are other forms of life in the cosmos, especially intelligent ones.
That's the perspective of a new book by science journalist Lee Billings titled Five Billion Years of Solitude, a nod to the Gabriel García Márquez masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. Billings constructs a moving tale of our collective yearning to find companionship in the vastness of space, using interviews with a few of the key players in the search for intelligent life (such as SETI's Frank Drake) and exoplanet hunting (such as MIT's Sara Seager, who just received a MacArthur award) as a means to humanize the story.
If we are alone, or if life is rare, we must be the protectors of life and take charge to preserve it at all costs, possibly spreading it to other planetary platforms. If nothing else, we know our sun will end its existence in under 5 billion years and that it will take Earth and life here with it. Assuming we, or our distant descendants, will still be here then, perhaps more machine than flesh, the only way to preserve our legacy is to go elsewhere. There is thus a firm deadline for leaving, even if it sits on the far horizon.
As I wrote in A Tear at the Edge of Creation, the study of life on Earth implies that we are unique. There are no other humans out there, even if there may be life. The history of life on a planet mirrors the history of the planet. This means that the particulars, the specific cataclysmic events that happened over the eons, the shuffling of the atmospheric composition, the shifting of the magnetic field, the nature of the planet's moons (or moon), all these are key factors on how life would evolve. Life here had to jump over many hoops to get to where it is today, hoops that are far from being trivial either biochemically or biologically.
This means that in spite of our efforts to find life elsewhere (and we will find it only if we look), life here becomes something of a rare gem that must be worshipped and preserved at all costs. Whatever lies out there, we must focus our efforts in preserving what we have here. We live on a magic planet. Even if there may be other magic planets in the vastness of space, for us everything starts with this one. Let us not forget this simple lesson as we look up in search of companionship.
You can keep up with more of what Marcelo is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @mgleiser
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. More talks "in a few weeks," he says.
Jason DeCrow/AP
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. More talks "in a few weeks," he says.
Jason DeCrow/AP
Iran is planning a fresh round of talks on its nuclear program "in a few weeks" after a generally positive first round of multiparty meetings in Geneva aimed at defusing tensions with the West.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, commenting on his Facebook page, says the next meeting with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany would also be held in Geneva.
Reuters, quoting a western diplomat, says the talks are set to resume in Geneva for two days beginning Nov. 7.
On Tuesday, Tehran presented a plan to the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to end the confrontation over its nuclear program, which it has always insisted is for peaceful purposes.
"[Comments] from Western officials meeting with Iranian negotiators indicated interest in the proposal, described by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as designed to allow Iran to leave the 'dark' path of international isolation.
Previous rounds have often been fitful and sporadic, reflecting the deadlock between the two sides. Zarif's Facebook comments that negotiations will resume 'in a few weeks' strengthened expectations that some progress was being made. He said the follow-up will also be held in Geneva, the venue for the ongoing talks."
The election of moderate President Hassan Rouhani four months ago has opened the door to negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, which many Western analysts believe is aimed at acquiring a bomb.
Health Affairs looks at economic trends & quality trade-offs
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Sue Ducat sducat@projecthope.org 301-841-9962 Health Affairs
Bethesda, MD Articles in Health Affairs' October issue examine the pursuit of improved physical and mental health. Featured articles include:
Providing More Home-Delivered Meals Is One Way To Keep Older Adults With Low Care Needs Out Of Nursing Homes. Expanding programs that deliver meals to Medicaid-receiving seniors would save 26 of 48 states money, in addition to allowing more seniors to stay in their own homes, according to a new study in the October issue of Health Affairs. The study by Kali Thomas and Vincent Mor of Brown University projects that if every U.S. state in the lower 48 expanded the number of seniors receiving meals by just 1 percent, 1,722 more Medicaid recipients avoid living in a nursing home and most states would experience a net annual savings from implementing the expansion. Every state would enable more seniors, who could live independently except for meals, to remain in their homes regardless of whether they are on Medicaid.
Biosimilars May Save Billions of Dollars. In Europe, biosimilars (the "second generation" of medicines derived from a biological source) have been available since 2006 within the European Union and are expected to save $15-$44 billion by 2020. The situation in the United States is different: although the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act is a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to finalize the necessary regulatory processes for their approval. A new study in the October issue of Health Affairs by Francis Megerlin of Universit Paris Descartes and co-authors examines the European experience and explains how the U.S. market can learn from itand eventually realize dramatic discounts to help "bend the cost curve."
The Health and Economic Benefits of "Delayed Aging." Although most medical research focuses on managing or eradicating individual diseases, Dana Goldman of the University of Southern California and co-authors demonstrate the value of an alternative approach to address the underlying biological mechanisms of disease. Using the Future Elderly Modela simulation of future health and spending of older Americansthe authors compared such an approach with optimistic "disease specific" scenarios, evaluating impact on longevity, disability, and major entitlement program costs. The authors estimate that delayed aging could increase life expectancy by an additional 2.2 years and generate more than $5 trillion in social value. When aging is delayed, say the authors, all fatal and disabling disease risks are also lowered. Although delayed aging would also greatly increase entitlement outlays, the authors demonstrate that these costs can be managed through modest policy changes, such as indexing the eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare.
On a related topic, an article by Ankur Pandya of Weill Cornell Medical College and co-authors looked at the impact of some of the future risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Using nine National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey waves from 1973 to 2010, the authors forecast disease risk and prevalence from 2015 to 2030. They found that despite continued improvements in the disease's treatment and declining smoking rates, increasing obesity rates, the aging population, and declining mortality from the disease should cause a rise in health care costs, disability, and reductions in the quality of life associated with increased disease prevalence. "Prevention efforts should be intensified," the authors urge, to curb the imminent spike in cardiovascular disease forecasted by their model.
###
ABOUT HEALTH AFFAIRS
Health Affairs is the leading journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published by Project HOPE, the peer-reviewed journal appears each month in print, with additional Web First papers published periodically at www.healthaffairs.org. The full text of each Health Affairs Web First paper is available free of charge to all website visitors for a one-week period following posting, after which it switches to pay-per-view for nonsubscribers. Web First papers are supported in part by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund. You can also find the journal on Facebook and Twitter. Read daily perspectives on Health Affairs Blog. Download our podcasts, including monthly Narrative Matters essays, on iTunes. Tap into Health Affairs content with the new iPad app.
FREE ALERTS FROM HEALTH AFFAIRS
Receive new Health Affairs article alerts in your choice of format:
E-mail alerts of new articles and tables of contents from Health Affairs.
RSS feed for new article headlines delivered to your Web site or reader.
Sunday UpDate: a weekly e-mail summary of what's new in Health Affairs.
Follow Health Affairs updates on Twitter.
Find Health Affairs on Facebook.
SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe today for full online access to the publication the Washington Post calls -- "the indispensable journal Health Affairs."
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Health Affairs looks at economic trends & quality trade-offs
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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| Share
]
Contact: Sue Ducat sducat@projecthope.org 301-841-9962 Health Affairs
Bethesda, MD Articles in Health Affairs' October issue examine the pursuit of improved physical and mental health. Featured articles include:
Providing More Home-Delivered Meals Is One Way To Keep Older Adults With Low Care Needs Out Of Nursing Homes. Expanding programs that deliver meals to Medicaid-receiving seniors would save 26 of 48 states money, in addition to allowing more seniors to stay in their own homes, according to a new study in the October issue of Health Affairs. The study by Kali Thomas and Vincent Mor of Brown University projects that if every U.S. state in the lower 48 expanded the number of seniors receiving meals by just 1 percent, 1,722 more Medicaid recipients avoid living in a nursing home and most states would experience a net annual savings from implementing the expansion. Every state would enable more seniors, who could live independently except for meals, to remain in their homes regardless of whether they are on Medicaid.
Biosimilars May Save Billions of Dollars. In Europe, biosimilars (the "second generation" of medicines derived from a biological source) have been available since 2006 within the European Union and are expected to save $15-$44 billion by 2020. The situation in the United States is different: although the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act is a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to finalize the necessary regulatory processes for their approval. A new study in the October issue of Health Affairs by Francis Megerlin of Universit Paris Descartes and co-authors examines the European experience and explains how the U.S. market can learn from itand eventually realize dramatic discounts to help "bend the cost curve."
The Health and Economic Benefits of "Delayed Aging." Although most medical research focuses on managing or eradicating individual diseases, Dana Goldman of the University of Southern California and co-authors demonstrate the value of an alternative approach to address the underlying biological mechanisms of disease. Using the Future Elderly Modela simulation of future health and spending of older Americansthe authors compared such an approach with optimistic "disease specific" scenarios, evaluating impact on longevity, disability, and major entitlement program costs. The authors estimate that delayed aging could increase life expectancy by an additional 2.2 years and generate more than $5 trillion in social value. When aging is delayed, say the authors, all fatal and disabling disease risks are also lowered. Although delayed aging would also greatly increase entitlement outlays, the authors demonstrate that these costs can be managed through modest policy changes, such as indexing the eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare.
On a related topic, an article by Ankur Pandya of Weill Cornell Medical College and co-authors looked at the impact of some of the future risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Using nine National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey waves from 1973 to 2010, the authors forecast disease risk and prevalence from 2015 to 2030. They found that despite continued improvements in the disease's treatment and declining smoking rates, increasing obesity rates, the aging population, and declining mortality from the disease should cause a rise in health care costs, disability, and reductions in the quality of life associated with increased disease prevalence. "Prevention efforts should be intensified," the authors urge, to curb the imminent spike in cardiovascular disease forecasted by their model.
###
ABOUT HEALTH AFFAIRS
Health Affairs is the leading journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published by Project HOPE, the peer-reviewed journal appears each month in print, with additional Web First papers published periodically at www.healthaffairs.org. The full text of each Health Affairs Web First paper is available free of charge to all website visitors for a one-week period following posting, after which it switches to pay-per-view for nonsubscribers. Web First papers are supported in part by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund. You can also find the journal on Facebook and Twitter. Read daily perspectives on Health Affairs Blog. Download our podcasts, including monthly Narrative Matters essays, on iTunes. Tap into Health Affairs content with the new iPad app.
FREE ALERTS FROM HEALTH AFFAIRS
Receive new Health Affairs article alerts in your choice of format:
E-mail alerts of new articles and tables of contents from Health Affairs.
RSS feed for new article headlines delivered to your Web site or reader.
Sunday UpDate: a weekly e-mail summary of what's new in Health Affairs.
Follow Health Affairs updates on Twitter.
Find Health Affairs on Facebook.
SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe today for full online access to the publication the Washington Post calls -- "the indispensable journal Health Affairs."
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| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Negotiations in Congress to end the fiscal impasse sputtered on Tuesday, leaving both chambers grasping for a way to reopen the government and raise the country's borrowing authority with a Thursday deadline drawing near.
The Senate halted discussions on its own plan, as it waited for the fractious Republican-controlled House of Representatives to come up with an alternative proposal ahead of the October 17 deadline, when the U.S. Treasury says the government will reach its borrowing limit.
Senate leaders had been close to a deal that would reopen the government and raise the debt limit until early 2014, while the initial alternative plan proposed by House Republican leaders failed to gain enough support in a closed-door meeting for the House to proceed.
"There are a lot of opinions about what direction to go. There have been no decisions about exactly what we will do," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters after the meeting.
"We're going to continue to work with our members on both sides of the aisle to try to make sure that there is no issue of default, and to get our government reopened," he said.
The disarray among House Republicans raised questions about what the House will be able to pass. Conservative House members, driven by support from Tea Party small-government activists, have demanded changes to Obama's signature healthcare law as part of any budget deal.
Those demands sparked the shutdown that began with the dawn of the new fiscal year on October 1, temporarily throwing hundreds of thousands of government employees out of work.
If Congress fails to reach a deal by Thursday, checks would likely go out on time for a short while for everyone from bondholders to workers who are owed unemployment benefits. But analysts warn that a default on government obligations could quickly follow, potentially causing the U.S. financial sector to freeze up and threatening the global economy.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell halted talks while House Republicans tried to sort out what they would support, Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters.
"We were on track and Boehner stepped in," he said. "McConnell is waiting on Boehner and Boehner is waiting on his caucus."
After Durbin's comments, markets got increasingly nervous about the prospects of a last-minute deal.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.55 percent in late afternoon trade. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was trading down 0.4 percent.
The House Republican proposal initially floated on Tuesday would have funded the government through January 15, and raised the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling by enough to cover the nation's borrowing needs through February 7, similar to the Senate plan, aides said.
But unlike the Senate, it would include a two-year suspension of the medical device tax included in Obama's healthcare law, and a requirement that members of Congress and the administration be covered under the law.
The House version also would not allow the U.S. Treasury to renew its extraordinary cash management measures to stretch borrowing capacity for months, which had tentatively been allowed under the Senate plan.
The White House and Senate Democrats quickly rejected the House draft plan as not workable.
'PARTISAN ATTEMPT' TO APPEASE TEA PARTY
Reid said the Republican plan was "partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans who forced the government to shut down in the first place."
"I am very disappointed with John Boehner who once again tried to preserve his role at the expense of the country," Reid said.
But Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has blamed House Republicans for the shutdown, blasted the White House and Senate Democrats for promptly rejecting Boehner's latest plan.
"I urge my Democratic colleagues, let's sit down and work this out," McCain declared, his voice rising. "Let's get this resolved."
"To categorically reject what the House of Representatives and the speaker are doing - and I think he is pretty courageous in what he's doing - in my view is not serving the American people," McCain said.
Obama was due to meet with House Democratic leaders at 3:15 p.m. (1915 GMT) to discuss their options.
Before the House action, Reid had said he was optimistic about reaching a final deal this week.
"There are productive negotiations going on with the Republican leader. I'm confident that we'll be able to reach a comprehensive agreement this week in time to avert a catastrophic default on the nation's bills," Reid said on the Senate floor.
Ratings firms have not yet revealed any plans to downgrade U.S. government debt.
Marie Cavanaugh, S&P's managing director for sovereign ratings, said on Tuesday during a panel discussion hosted by Democratic Representative Maxine Waters, "Standard & Poor's thinks that the current impasse over the debt ceiling and the continuing resolution is unlikely to change our rating, which is AA+ with a stable outlook."
Numerous polls show Republicans have taken a hit in opinion polls since the standoff began and the government shutdown October 1. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Monday found that 74 percent of Americans disapprove of the way congressional Republicans have handled the standoff, compared with a 53 percent disapproval rating for Obama.
Another survey released by Gallup on Tuesday showed American confidence in the U.S. economy fell another five points last week as the government shutdown continued.
The crisis is the latest in a series of budget battles in recent years that have hurt consumer confidence and weighed on the economy. A Monday estimate by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank, said the uncertainty from the frequent showdowns had boosted the unemployment rate by 0.6 of a percentage point, or the equivalent of 900,000 jobs since late 2009.
(Additional reporting by David Lawder, Susan Heavey, Amanda Becker; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Karey Van Hall, Grant McCool and Tim Dobbyn)
What's best for depressed pregnant women and their infants?
Public release date: 14-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: marla Paul marla-paul@northwestern.edu 312-503-8928 Northwestern University
National experts will explore if antidepressants for mom improve outcomes for babies
CHICAGO --- Do the benefits of treating depressed pregnant women with antidepressants outweigh the risks of the drug exposure to their babies in terms of neonatal health and long-term development?
That hotly debated question from scientific and ethical perspectives will be at the center of Northwestern Medicine's 2013 Perinatal Mental Health Meeting Nov. 6 to 8 in Chicago. National experts from various fields will present new research findings on perinatal depression as well as offer workshops in how to best treat it with psychotherapy. They also hope to launch perinatal depression as a new separate clinical discipline.
Perinatal mental health is an evolving new field of research about a huge public health problem: 10 to 14 percent of young women have depression during the perinatal period and one out of 12 pregnant women will be treated with antidepressants.
A novel event at the meeting will be a demonstration by masters-level clinicians and an actress showing new evidence-based behavioral psychotherapy techniques. Women with the disorder have altered emotional responses compared to major depression and require a different therapeutic approach. The actress will portray the true story of an actual patient who suffered from perinatal depression.
"What's the optimal treatment for pregnant women with depression to improve outcomes for their infants?" asked Northwestern Medicine psychiatrist Katherine L. Wisner, M.D., the director of the conference. "Does the benefit of treating women for depression with medication outweigh the risk to the baby? That's the critical question we have not yet answered."
Wisner, a leading scientist in perinatal depression, said a goal of the meeting is to move closer to a conclusion. Clinicians also are trying to develop a specialty of perinatal psychiatry or perinatal mental health professionals, as exists in the United Kingdom and Australia, Wisner said.
Wisner is director of Northwestern's Asher Center for the Study and Treatment of Depressive Disorders and the Norman and Helen Asher Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She's also a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
"We must remember the illnesses we see can be fatal," Wisner said. Uncontrolled depression can result in low birth weight, preterm birth, suicide, loss of interpersonal relationships, divorce and loss of a job. Conversely, the risks of antidepressants on the fetus can include preterm birth, restlessness and newborn rigidity and tremor.
Wisner talked about several pregnant patients who committed suicide after they stopped taking their medications either on their own or with the knowledge of their physicians.
The meeting, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, will include the following topics:
New research about how the exposure and experience the fetus has during growth in utero programs its lifelong health -- a new area known as fetal programming
Psychological research about the effect of severe stress and anxiety on fetal development
How to evaluate the risk and benefits of antidepressant treatment for each individual pregnant patient
Brain imaging studies in maternal mental health
New psychotherapy techniques: prevention of depression in pregnancy with mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy, a web-based approach for treatment of postpartum depression, face-to-face psychotherapy and a telephone-based approach
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
What's best for depressed pregnant women and their infants?
Public release date: 14-Oct-2013 [
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: marla Paul marla-paul@northwestern.edu 312-503-8928 Northwestern University
National experts will explore if antidepressants for mom improve outcomes for babies
CHICAGO --- Do the benefits of treating depressed pregnant women with antidepressants outweigh the risks of the drug exposure to their babies in terms of neonatal health and long-term development?
That hotly debated question from scientific and ethical perspectives will be at the center of Northwestern Medicine's 2013 Perinatal Mental Health Meeting Nov. 6 to 8 in Chicago. National experts from various fields will present new research findings on perinatal depression as well as offer workshops in how to best treat it with psychotherapy. They also hope to launch perinatal depression as a new separate clinical discipline.
Perinatal mental health is an evolving new field of research about a huge public health problem: 10 to 14 percent of young women have depression during the perinatal period and one out of 12 pregnant women will be treated with antidepressants.
A novel event at the meeting will be a demonstration by masters-level clinicians and an actress showing new evidence-based behavioral psychotherapy techniques. Women with the disorder have altered emotional responses compared to major depression and require a different therapeutic approach. The actress will portray the true story of an actual patient who suffered from perinatal depression.
"What's the optimal treatment for pregnant women with depression to improve outcomes for their infants?" asked Northwestern Medicine psychiatrist Katherine L. Wisner, M.D., the director of the conference. "Does the benefit of treating women for depression with medication outweigh the risk to the baby? That's the critical question we have not yet answered."
Wisner, a leading scientist in perinatal depression, said a goal of the meeting is to move closer to a conclusion. Clinicians also are trying to develop a specialty of perinatal psychiatry or perinatal mental health professionals, as exists in the United Kingdom and Australia, Wisner said.
Wisner is director of Northwestern's Asher Center for the Study and Treatment of Depressive Disorders and the Norman and Helen Asher Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She's also a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
"We must remember the illnesses we see can be fatal," Wisner said. Uncontrolled depression can result in low birth weight, preterm birth, suicide, loss of interpersonal relationships, divorce and loss of a job. Conversely, the risks of antidepressants on the fetus can include preterm birth, restlessness and newborn rigidity and tremor.
Wisner talked about several pregnant patients who committed suicide after they stopped taking their medications either on their own or with the knowledge of their physicians.
The meeting, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, will include the following topics:
New research about how the exposure and experience the fetus has during growth in utero programs its lifelong health -- a new area known as fetal programming
Psychological research about the effect of severe stress and anxiety on fetal development
How to evaluate the risk and benefits of antidepressant treatment for each individual pregnant patient
Brain imaging studies in maternal mental health
New psychotherapy techniques: prevention of depression in pregnancy with mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy, a web-based approach for treatment of postpartum depression, face-to-face psychotherapy and a telephone-based approach
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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