OBJECTIVE To investigate the practice of self-medication by nursing mothers, the main drugs used and the influence on the duration of breastfeeding. METHODS A longitudinal cohort study involving 246 women seen at the maternity unit of Hospital Manoel Gonçalves in Itaúna, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. A monthly follow-up of mothers and newborns was performed for the first 12 months postpartum...

Mammalian newborns exhibit avid responsiveness to odor compounds emanating from conspecific milk. Milk is however developmentally heterogeneous in composition as a function of both evolved constraints and offspring demand. The present study aimed to verify whether milk odor attractivity for neonates is equally distributed along lactation in Mus musculus (Balb-c strain). Therefore, we exposed pu...

Programming is an epigenetic phenomena by which nutritional, hormonal, physical psychological and other stressful events acting in a critical period of life, such as gestation and lactation, modifies in a prolonged way certain physiological functions. This process was preserved by natural selection as an important adaptive tool for survival of organisms living in nutritional impaired areas. So,...

BACKGROUND Breastfeeding has numerous maternal and infant benefits. Progesterone contraception after birth is frequently recommended, but because a decrease in progesterone is required to initiate lactation, early postpartum progesterone contraception use could inhibit lactation. The purpose of this article is to critically evaluate the scientific basis for conflicting clinical recommendations ...

Exposure of mothers to chronic stressors during pregnancy or the postpartum period often leads to the development of depression, anxiety, or other related mood disorders. The adverse effects of mood disorders are often mediated through maternal behavior and recent work has identified arginine vasopressin (AVP) as a key neuropeptide hormone in the expression of maternal behavior in both rats and...

1. In mammals, nutrient allocation during lactation is a critical component of maternal care as milk intake promotes juvenile growth and survival, and hence maternal and offspring fitness. 2. Milk composition varies widely across mammals and is hypothesized to have arisen via selection pressures associated with environment, diet and life history. These hypotheses have been proposed based on obs...

BACKGROUND Recent studies suggest that lactation has long-term effects on risk for cardiovascular disease in women, but the effects on cardiovascular mortality are less well known. METHOD In a Norwegian population-based prospective cohort study, we studied the association of lifetime duration of lactation with cardiovascular mortality in 21,889 women aged 30 to 85 years who attended the secon...

A significant increase in growth of follicles that are selected for ovulation seems to occur on days 14-17 of the estrous cycle. In pigs there is a continuous growth of follicles without appearance of dominant follicles or follicle waves during the estrous cycle. There is a general consensus that a decrease of FSH during the follicular phase is accompanied with the selection of ovulatory follic...