BACKGROUND Lesbian and bisexual women may be at greater risk of breast cancer than heterosexual women during the premenopausal period due to disparities in risk factors. METHODS With 16 years of prospective data from a large cohort of U.S. women ages 25-58 years, we conducted a breast cancer risk assessment for 87,392 premenopausal women by applying the Rosner-Colditz biomathematical risk pre...

This article analyses juridical discourses about Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR) in Portugal, focusing specifically on the access of lesbians to this type of intervention. Empirical data refer to an exploratory research that combined the analysis of legislation with non-directive interviews to five judges from Family and Juvenile Courts of Law of the Northern Region of Portugal. One argue...

Research suggests that significant health disparities exist among the gay and lesbian population in the United States. These disparities impact both the shortand long-term health outcomes of this population. This study first provides a current literature review of available research on gay and lesbian health disparities and organizes these findings according to health topic. The paper then inve...

In a study comparing lesbian and heterosexual women's response to newly diagnosed breast cancer, we compared data from 29 lesbians with 246 heterosexual women with breast cancer. Our hypotheses were that lesbian breast cancer patients would report higher scores of mood disturbance; suffer fewer problems with body image and sexual activity; show more expressiveness and cohesiveness and less conf...

We examined the prevalence of binge drinking among lesbian and gay (LG) youths, and evaluated whether experiences such as internalized sexual stigma, the experience of "coming out" to family and friends, and the individuals' sense of "connectedness" to the gay community could be associated with alcohol abuse. The research involved 119 gay (58.9%) and 83 lesbian (41.1%) Italian youths (18 to 24 ...

The study assessed the influence of protective factors on the psychological adjustment of children who had experienced homophobia and whose mothers were participants in a longitudinal study of planned lesbian families. Data were collected as part of the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study by interviewing the children and having the mothers complete questionnaires. No significant differen...

*Policy Statement: this policy reflects emerging clinical and scientific advances as of the date issued and is subject to change.The information should not be construed as dictating an exclusive course of treatment or procedure to be followed. Local institutions can dictate amendments to these opinions.They should be well documented if modified at the local level. None of the contents may be re...

AIM To study parenting stress in lesbian parents and to compare that stress with heterosexual parents following in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or spontaneous pregnancies. METHODS This survey took place during 2005-2008 and was part of the Swedish multicentre study on gamete donation. It comprised 131 lesbian parents, 83 heterosexual IVF parents, who used their own gametes, and 118 spontaneous p...

Media attention and the literature on lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth overwhelmingly focus on violence involving hate crimes and bullying, while ignoring the fact that vulnerable youth also may be at increased risk of violence in their dating relationships. In this study, we examine physical, psychological, sexual, and cyber dating violence experiences among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth--a...

This study compared 51 adolescents from intact two-mother planned lesbian families (all conceived through donor insemination) with 51 adolescents from intact mother– father families on their relationships with their parents (parental control, disclosure to parents, and adolescent– parent relationship quality), psychological adjustment (selfesteem, social anxiety, and conduct problems), and subs...