What is a menopausal woman to do? A new study finds that taking soy supplements, a popular alternative to hormone-replacement therapy, doesn't help relieve the symptoms of menopause or protect against bone loss.
For the trial, researchers randomly assigned 248 women to take either 200 mg of soy isoflavones or placebo tablets daily. Neither the researchers nor the women knew who was taking which pills until the end of the study.
The results: after two years, measurements of bone-mineral density in the women's hips and spines showed no differences between the soy and placebo groups. Across the board, the women had small amounts of bone loss.
As for the frequency of menopausal symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, loss of libido and vaginal dryness, again no difference. In fact, at the end of the study, more women taking soy reported having hot flashes than those taking a placebo.
So what other options do women have? For hot flashes, some antidepressants and the antiseizure drug gabapentin have been shown to help. And to prevent bone loss, women should still turn to calcium, vitamin D and regular exercise.
Good news for parents who want to know the sex of their baby: a noninvasive test of Mom's blood--which contains fetal DNA--can determine the baby's sex at as early as seven weeks' gestation, though it performs most accurately after 20 weeks, according to a new review of previous studies of the test. That's useful not just for planning a baby's wardrobe; the blood test could also help doctors identify babies at risk for sex-linked disorders like hemophilia and obviate the need for invasive procedures like amniocentesis.
FOOD SAFETY
Hot Lunch?
In the first study of its kind, researchers found that most sack lunches taken to school by preschool children were stored at unsafe temperatures, potentially encouraging the growth of harmful bacteria that can cause food poisoning. Only about 45% of lunches containing perishable foods like sandwich meat, yogurt and vegetables included an ice pack, and even those items tended to be dangerously warm. To reduce the risk of food-borne illness, the study's authors offer a few guidelines for parents: Make sure your child's school stores lunches in a fridge; don't refrigerate lunches in insulated bags, which keep food from staying cool; avoid using mayo, which spoils quickly; and freeze juices and waters to help keep lunches chilled.
Sources: Archives of Internal Medicine; JAMA; Cancer; PLoS One; Pediatrics