The Uterus Update 🗞️
Ozempic babies, ovary atlases – and menopausal whales
It’s reproductive health round-up week here at Life, Almost. For new subscribers (hello!👋) I do one of these a month. I keep an eye out for interesting developments and findings relevant to women’s and reproductive health and break them all down here for you, in one handy place.
First, some housekeeping: I’m taking a break for the next two weeks, so there won’t be a free newsletter while I’m away. (Although paying subscribers will continue to get posts).
Second – in much more exciting news – a friend of mine, Jess, is bringing back #babylosshour, a supportive weekly chat about aspects of baby and pregnancy loss. She used to host it on Twitter, but now it’s taking place on Instagram, at 8pm, on Tuesdays. Next week’s discussion is on early recurrent pregnancy loss. And Tuesday 30th April is on the subject of there being no living rainbow baby. You can catch up with this week’s chat here.
Now let’s get into those headlines.
In the news…
Women and their doctors are reporting a rise in so-called ‘Ozempic babies’. The more I think about this story, the more insane it makes me feel. Should we be sticking a cutesy label like ‘Ozempic babies’ on a story that actually looks more like a whopping, great data gap around this new class of weight-loss drugs? Personally, I’m not thrilled with the journalistic decision-making in the report linked above that places a doctor’s explanation that this is because even ‘very slight’ weight loss makes women ‘more fertile’ (👍) higher up the story than the possibility that this medication is interfering with the effectiveness of birth control (🚩). Or, even more to the point, in my non-expert view, the fact that we won’t actually know how Wegovy/Ozempic/semaglutide affects pregnancy until the completion of a clinical trial in 2027 (🚩🚩🚩🚩). To spell it out, that’s another three years before we’ll have any meaningful data on these drugs and their safety outcomes for pregnancy including miscarriage, stillbirth, pre-term birth, pre-eclampsia, or developmental delay. Drugs which have been taken up with such alacrity – especially by women – and have made so much money for their manufacturers. I can’t be the only one who feels deeply uneasy about this?? (The Independent)