Regular coffee drinkers seem to need caffeine to return to their normal state of alertness and to avoid the side effects of caffeine withdrawal such as headaches. That runs counter to popular belief that drinking caffeinated beverages offers some added boost in alertness, the researchers said.

“Although caffeine consumers feel alerted by caffeine, the effect is actually only bringing you back from caffeine withdrawal-induced, low-level alertness,” said study author Peter Rogers, a professor in the department of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol in England. “You are not gaining anything over and above a non-consumer of caffeine.”

The study is published online June 2 in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Caffeine, sometimes called the most commonly used drug in the world, acts on the central nervous system’s receptors for the neurotransmitter adenosine, according to background information in the study. Adenosine is involved in regulating blood pressure, as well as sleepiness and wakefulness, alertness and anxiety responses, Rogers said.

In the study, researchers asked 379 participants to abstain from drinking caffeinated beverages for 16 hours. They then gave half of the participants 100 milligrams of caffeine (the equivalent of one to two cups of coffee), and another 150 milligrams of caffeine an hour and a half later. The other half were given a placebo.

Participants were also asked about their normal consumption of caffeinated beverages. Light caffeine consumers were those who drank less than 40 milligrams a day, or less than the amount of caffeine found in one cup of coffee. A cup of instant coffee has about 54 milligrams of caffeine, according to the study, though the precise amounts are dependent on brand and brewing method, among other factors, Rogers said.

While both light caffeine drinkers and heavier caffeine drinkers reported feeling more alert after being given caffeine, there were marked differences in their responses to the placebo.

Those who normally drank few caffeinated beverages didn’t notice much of a difference in their level of alertness when given a placebo versus caffeine. Heavier caffeine drinkers given the placebo, however, reported a sharp drop-off in feelings of alertness.

In addition, heavier caffeine consumers given placebo were also much more likely to report having a headache.

“What this study does is provide very strong evidence for the idea that we don’t gain a benefit in alertness from consuming caffeine,” Rogers said. “Although we feel alert, that’s just caffeine bringing us back to our normal state of alertness.”

Furthermore, abstaining from caffeine when you’re used to having it can cause a “caffeine hangover,” Rogers said.

“The nice thing about a caffeine hangover is you can get rid of it quickly by drinking coffee,” Rogers noted.

Researchers also looked at caffeine-induced anxiety, a common side effect that’s more pronounced in people with a specific variant of the ADORA2A gene, previous research has shown.

In this study, about 20 percent of participants had the ADORA2A variant, Rogers said; other research has put the number of people with the variant as high as one-third.

Researchers found people with the anxiety-producing variant were no less likely to consume coffee than those without the variant and in fact, tended to drink a bit more coffee suggesting that the “anxiety buzz” caused by caffeine isn’t necessarily unpleasant, Rogers said.

“They don’t seem to particularly mind it, in fact, they might like that anxiety buzz,” Rogers said.

Participants who typically consumed caffeinated beverages also seemed to develop a tolerance to its anxiety-producing effects. Among regular caffeine drinkers, there was little difference in feelings of anxiety whether they’d been given a placebo or the real thing, while light caffeine drinkers reported significantly more anxiety after being given caffeine.

Dr. Peter Martin, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, said the study is an interesting look at the biological effects of caffeine. However, not everyone who drinks lots of caffeinated beverages experiences withdrawal such as headaches when they cut back or quit.

And compared to other “drugs,” the effects of caffeine are mild, and coffee and tea in particular may have other health benefits.

“That is the difference between statistical significance and clinical relevance,” Martin said. “No one is going to change what they do, and there’s no reason to change. There is a lot of data to suggest caffeine improves motor performance and memory performance.”

A study released online May 12 in The Cochrane Library found caffeine helped prevent errors among shift workers and those who work at night.

SOURCES: Peter Rogers, Ph.D., professor, department of experimental psychology, University of Bristol, England; Peter Martin, M.D., professor, psychiatry and pharmacology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.

An active social life, being married and having a partner who is also retired all make a huge difference in seniors’ enjoyment of life, but having children or grandchildren matters little, the University of Greenwich team found in its study of 279 British retirees.

Grandchildren are a source of pride, but there are trade-offs to having them, said lead researcher Oliver Robinson, of the university’s department of psychology and counseling.

“There are both benefits and drawbacks to the presence of children and grandchildren in retirement, which balance each other out,” Robinson said. “The positives are that having children and grandchildren imparts a sense of purpose and meaning, while the drawback is the frequent commitment for child care that can potentially interfere with the sense of freedom and autonomy that is at the heart of a positive retirement.”

Robinson and his team were to report their findings Thursday at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Study participants, who were recruited from a retirement Web site and online newsletter, answered questions about family, friends and their life in retirement. They also completed a scale designed to measure their satisfaction with their lives.

The researchers found no difference in life satisfaction between retirees who have children and grandchildren and those who don’t.

But a strong social network tended to have a major positive effect on retirees’ enjoyment of life. Seniors with high levels of life satisfaction strongly agreed with the statement, “I have active social groups I enjoy spending time with.” Conversely, seniors who aren’t enjoying life much strongly agreed with the statement, “I miss the socializing of working life.”

“Social groups in retirement, particularly those that revolve around shared interests, can provide a retiree with a number of basic psychological needs — a sense of connectedness, of purpose, and of mastery if there is a skill involved,” Robinson said. “The great retirement trap is loneliness, and active social groups negate the possibility of that.”

American retirees have expressed similar sentiments regarding what makes their life most enjoyable, said Rosemary Blieszner, associate dean of the graduate school at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and director of the Center for Gerontology.

“Older adults are very interested in their grandchildren and want them to succeed, but really, I think that most of your happiness and psychological well-being is going to come from your peers,” Blieszner said. “For many stages of life, not just old age, people feel like their age peers understand what they’re going through and give them that social support that comes from friendship and understanding.”

Having a spouse or a longtime partner also matters significantly when it comes to enjoyment of retired life, the British team found. Seniors who are widowed, never married, divorced or separated reported lower levels of life satisfaction than people in long-term relationships.

It also makes a difference whether your partner is retired along with you. The study found that retirees whose spouse or partner is still working enjoyed their life less than those who have been joined in retirement by their partner.

“Those retirement individuals whose partner is not retired miss their work lives more, perhaps because they are unable to fully engage with retirement,” Robinson said.

“They are in a kind of limbo state, unable to make plans for long holidays or a substantial change of life until the retirement of their partner happens,” he added. “When a couple retire together, they can plan aspirationally together, and help each other adapt to the new life phase.”

SOURCES: Oliver Robinson, M.A., M.Sc., Ph.D., University of Greenwich, Department of Psychology and Counseling, London; Rosemary Blieszner, Ph.D., Alumni Distinguished Professor, associate dean, Graduate School, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and associate director, Center for Gerontology, Department of Human Development, Blacksburg, Va.

When asked what was important to them at the end of their lives, people dying of cancer ranked two factors highest: pain control and being at peace with God, the study found.

“Medicine tends to focus on the more scientific aspects of the person, and we’ve made wonderful strides in improving patient care, but there’s another important component of patient health: spirituality,” explained Dr. Tracy Anne Balboni, a radiation oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the study’s lead author. “This is clearly an area where some important advancements can be made.”

The researchers discovered that people with advanced cancer were far more likely to choose hospice care when their spiritual needs had been addressed. And among those who were very religious, meeting spiritual needs increased the odds that a terminal patient would choose to forgo aggressive, yet often unsuccessful, medical treatments, the study found.

However, at least six of 10 people with advanced cancer reported that their spiritual needs were only minimally or not at all supported.

Results of the study were published online Dec. 14 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Earlier research had found that the most religious patients are much more likely to choose aggressive treatments during their last week of life in an attempt to prolong their life — even if those treatments don’t improve their quality of life. Aggressive treatments include mechanical ventilation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“A religious person might think they need to do aggressive care,” said Balboni, adding that they may feel it’s wrong to give up. “But, if the medical team engages them more, they can help them understand that it’s not necessarily against their religion to forgo futile medical procedures.”

The new study involved 670 people with advanced cancer from seven treatment centers in the Northeast and Texas. The final analysis included information from 343 people who later died and whose caregivers completed a post-death interview. The average time between the start of the study and the person’s death was 116 days.

For purposes of the study, spiritual care was defined as patient-perceived support of their spiritual needs by their medical team and the receipt of pastoral care services.

Most people (60 percent) said that their spiritual needs either hadn’t been met or were minimally supported at the start of the study, and 54 percent had not received pastoral care visits. In the final week of life, 73 percent of the participants received hospice care, and 17 percent received aggressive care.

Those who had greater spiritual support from their medical team, including doctors, nurses, chaplains and more, reported a higher quality of life as they neared death than did those who felt unsupported spiritually.

People who felt they were getting better spiritual support were 3½ times more likely to receive hospice care. And among highly religious people, those whose spiritual needs were supported were five times more likely to receive hospice care and five times less likely to receive aggressive medical care, the study reported.

“We found that patients whose spiritual needs were well-supported seemed to transition to hospice more frequently and had a marked reduction in the use of aggressive care,” Balboni said.

Yet despite the findings, said Dr. Harold G. Koenig, co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University Medical Center, “few people are getting their spiritual needs met by the medical system.”

“Many doctors are uncomfortable discussing spirituality and haven’t been trained to do so,” he said. “And churches have a role, too. Although it’s not a popular topic, churches need to talk about the end of life in the pulpit. People don’t know theologically what they’re supposed to do.”

Religious people, Koenig said, are often left to think they should always have hope and should always “give God a chance to provide a miracle.” Hospice care, though, can often provide spiritual guidance and help people prepare for death, he said.

Doctors don’t need to actually provide spiritual care, Koenig said, but it’s important for physicians to acknowledge their patients’ spiritual needs and make sure they’re addressed by pastoral care or hospice. “The doctor does have to be the one to orchestrate this,” he said.

But if someone’s spiritual needs are not being met, Koenig and Balboni agreed that the person — or a friend or family member — needs to speak up. And if the patient’s doctor doesn’t feel qualified to discuss end-of-life spiritual issues, the doctor should be able to refer you to someone who can.

“What we have found is that no region of the brain is spared from lead exposure. Distinct areas of the brain are affected differently,” study author Kim Cecil, an imaging scientist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and a professor of radiology, pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, said in a news release.

The study included 33 adults, mean age 21, who were enrolled as infants in the long-term Cincinnati Lead Study, which looked at prenatal and early childhood exposure in 376 infants from high-risk areas of Cincinnati between 1979 and 1987.

The study participants had blood lead levels ranging from 5 micrograms to 37 micrograms per deciliter, with a mean of 14. They had IQ deficiencies and histories of juvenile delinquency and criminal arrests.

Functional MRI was used to monitor the participants’ brains while they did two tasks that assess attention, decision making and impulse control. The scans showed that in order to complete a task that required inhibition, participants with elevated blood lead levels required activation from additional regions within the brain’s frontal and parietal lobes.

“This tells us that the area of the brain responsible for inhibition is damaged by lead exposure and that other regions of the brain must compensate in order for an individual to perform. However, the compensation is not sufficient,” Cecil said.

According to Cecil, the brain’s white matter, which organizes and matures at an early age, adapts to lead exposure. But the frontal lobe, which is the last to develop, suffers permanent damage from lead exposure as it matures.

“Many people think that once lead blood levels decrease, the effects should be reversible, but, in fact, lead exposure has harmful and lasting effects,” Cecil said.

The study was scheduled to be presented Tuesday at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting, in Chicago.

Of that amount, insurers pay $149.4 billion while patients pay $36.1 billion in out-of-pocket costs. Annual insurer costs are $4,833 per female patient and $4,036 per male patient. Women also have higher out-of-pocket expenses than men — $1,379 versus $694. The total cost for female patients is $118 billion, compared with $67.5 billion for male patients. All figures are in 2007 dollars.

“Understanding the economic costs of OA [osteoarthritis] is important for payers, providers, patients and other stakeholders. Our study clearly reflects the significant impact of OA on U.S. health-care spending,” study author John Rizzo, of Stony Brook University in New York, said in a news release.

For the study, which is published in the December issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism, Rizzo and his colleagues analyzed 1996-2005 data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The data sample included 84,647 women and 70,590 men aged 18 and older who had health insurance. The health-care costs included physician, hospital and outpatient services, as well as drugs, diagnostic tests and related medical services.

People with osteoarthritis suffer gradual loss of cartilage, primarily in the knees, hips, hands, feet and spine. About 27 million Americans have osteoarthritis, which affects more women than men, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2030, it is projected that 25 percent of the U.S. population (nearly 67 million people) will have physician-diagnosed arthritis.

The study authors said increased awareness and better screening to identify patients with osteoarthritis may help delay disease progression and resulting disability, thus reducing medical costs.

“Our results suggest that patients with OA may benefit from greater efforts to promote exercise, proper medication use and appropriate surgical treatments for the disease,” Rizzo concluded.

In one study, dabigatran etexilate (marketed as Pradax in Canada and Pradaxa in Europe; it is not yet approved in the United States) proved to be safe in preventing blood clots when patients were treated for acute coronary syndrome, a cluster of symptoms that might indicate a heart attack.

“Dabigatran seems to be safe on top of dual antiplatelet therapy [meaning aspirin and Plavix],” said study author Dr. Jonas Oldgren, chief physician in the department of cardiology at Uppsala University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. “It has already been shown to have superior efficacy compared with warfarin.”

A previous trial had demonstrated that dabigatran outperformed warfarin in preventing strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation.

The current trial, to be presented Wednesday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., also saw a reduction in mortality, nonfatal heart attack and stroke, although it was not specifically designed to look at efficacy.

“Dabigatran appears to be superior to warfarin in terms of safety and more effective as well. This is the first alternative to warfarin that could signal a changing of the guard,” said Dr. Bernard Gersh, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn. “I think there are still questions that need to be answered but it’s fair to say that warfarin has been around for many, many years and everybody hates warfarin. Patients hate warfarin. Doctors hate warfarin. It’s not the most convenient drug, but it’s effective and it is cheap.”

The trial involved more than 1,800 patients in 24 countries with acute coronary syndrome who were randomized to receive one of four doses of dabigatran, made by Boehringer Ingelheim, or a placebo. All participants were also taking aspirin and Plavix.

“It’s premature to say that a drug like dabigatran will take the place of warfarin,” Gersh said. “There will be a lot of discussion about cost and convenience. It’s a twice-daily dose and there are some questions about a possible higher rate of heart attack. I don’t think this is truly resolved yet, but I think we can say that for the first time we have seen a drug that certainly has the potential to be an alternative to warfarin, and maybe even superior.”

Two other trials, both presented at the heart association meeting and published in the Nov. 18 issue of Circulation, looked at an anti-clotting pill called ticagrelor (Brilinta), comparing its performance with clopidogrel (Plavix). Brilinta, made by AstraZeneca, is also awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Prior Brilinta studies have found that it was better than Plavix in preventing new heart attacks and preventing deaths among patients who had already had a heart attack.

In one of the two latest trials, both conducted by researchers at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, patients with stable coronary artery disease who were also taking aspirin were randomized to Brilinta, Plavix or a placebo for six weeks.

The results showed that Brilinta could be turned off faster, meaning patients could go into surgery right away if needed, and lasted longer than Plavix.

The second Brilinta study showed that patients who didn’t respond to Plavix did respond to Brilinta.

All of this just signals the beginning of a new round of anti-clotting medications, experts said.

“There are several trials ongoing of other alternatives to warfarin. We will probably see results in the next two years,” Gersh said.

Rather, it’s binge drinking — downing five or more alcoholic drinks at a sitting.

“People have a hard time identifying alcohol as a drug,” said Jenny Hwang, associate dean of students and director of the counseling center at Stony Brook University on Long Island, N.Y. In fact, she said, heavy drinking is glamorized as a rite of passage in college years.

But it’s a dangerous rite.

The death toll from alcohol has been rising among U.S. college students. According to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, alcohol-related deaths have increased in this group from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 less than a decade later, in 2005.

Even if the binge drinking doesn’t result in death, Hwang and others emphasize, the risks can be great. In a study published in April, researchers from San Diego reported that young people who binge drink can seriously damage the white matter in their brain, which is crucial for relaying information between brain cells.

Though damage to white matter has long been observed in the brains of adult alcoholics, the researchers expressed surprise at seeing it in young drinkers.

Because of such dangers and the rising death toll, Hwang and other college officials across the United States have taken action, putting into place peer programs and educational outreach to try to stem the tide of drinking-related hazards.

College officials also have begun to reach out to bars near their campuses to enlist their help in the effort. Parents of college students can help as well, experts said, by making sure their college-age offspring are aware of the dangers and don’t become a statistic.

“You want to try to reach students before they get to a state where they are in an emergency, such as an alcoholic overdose,” said Shirley Haberman, director of GatorWell Health Promotion Services at the University of Florida, in Gainesville.

Her department tries to be proactive, she said, getting the word out that binge drinking is risky drinking and letting students know how to help when fellow students might need emergency care. New students, she said, are given a brochure developed by the alcohol industry that encourages responsible drinking.

In the surrounding community, Haberman said, the city council has worked to encourage bars and taverns to be responsible by ensuring, for instance, that patrons are 21 or older.

At Stony Brook, it took a tragedy to inspire an anti-binge-drinking program. The college-age son of a long-time faculty member died of acute alcohol poisoning while attending a university in the Midwest. This past spring, Hwang and others created a peer-training program that teaches students to recognize dangerous symptoms of intoxication and to call 911 when needed.

Students who complete the four-hour program, which also includes CPR training, learn that letting those who are drunk and passed out sleep it off is not the safe or wise thing to do, Hwang said. It’s called the Red Watch Band Program because those who complete it are given a red watch to wear to show they are part of the program.

Among the students who’ve signed up for the program so farm, “many of them are concerned about their friends,” Hwang said. Some have called 911, and others have distracted friends headed to a party where heavy drinking was expected by suggesting alternate activities.

More than 20 other colleges are planning to launch the program, she said.

How can parents help? For starters, don’t share your own war stories of college drinking, Hwang urged. Parents can also discuss the legal problems associated with underage drinking and encourage their offspring to look out for their friends.

Also keep an ear out when visiting colleges, she added.

“When parents shop around for colleges, they really should be able to find out what kind of policies, practices [each has] to address the national problem of alcohol,” Hwang said. And if college officials claim there is not problem? “I would say they are not being fully honest,” she said.

“There are currently limited data on the role of diet in kidney disease,” researcher Dr. Julie Lin, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in a news release. “While more study is needed, our research suggests that higher sodium and artificially sweetened soda intake are associated with greater rate of decline in kidney function.”

The first study looked at diet and kidney function decline in more than 3,000 women enrolled in the national Nurses’ Health Study. The researchers found that “in women with well-preserved kidney function, higher dietary sodium intake was associated with greater kidney function decline, which is consistent with experimental animal data that high sodium intake promotes progressive kidney disease.”

The second study looked at the association between sugar- and artificially-sweetened beverages and kidney function decline in the same group of women. The researchers found an association between two or more servings per day of artificially sweetened soda and a two-fold increased risk of faster kidney function decline. There was no connection between sugar-sweetened beverages and kidney function decline.

The association between artificially sweetened beverages and kidney function decline persisted after Lin and colleague Dr. Gary Curhan accounted for other factors, such as age, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, physical activity, caloric intake and cardiovascular disease.

Further study is needed to better understand how artificial sweeteners influence kidney function decline, the researchers said.

The studies were to be presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology, in San Diego.

The study, which is published in the October issue of Pediatrics, estimated that 110 of every 10,000 U.S. youngsters will be diagnosed at some point in their lives with an autism spectrum disorder. That currently translates to about 673,000 American children with some form of autism, according to the study.

“I think this is a very important study that says the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders may be even higher than we suspected previously,” said Geraldine Dawson, chief scientific officer of Autism Speaks.

“Autism is a major public health challenge, and this study is another call to action that we need to be able to provide care across the lifespan,” she said.

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder. Severity varies from child to child.

Characteristic behavior includes impaired social interaction, difficulty with communication and repetitive behaviors. Over a lifetime, health-care costs for someone with autism are estimated to be more than $1.6 million, according to the study.

The researchers culled data for the study from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, which included more than 78,000 children from across the country, all between 3 and 17 years old.

Parents of 1,412 children reported that a doctor had given their child a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Only 913 parents, however, said their child currently had an autism spectrum disorder.

Of that group, 494 parents classified their child’s autism as mild, and 320 parents described it as moderate. Just 90 parents said their child’s autism was severe.

Cynthia Johnson, director of the Autism Center at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, attributed the increase to better diagnostic criteria and an increasing awareness of autism.

“This is more data that adds to what’s already in existence that shows autism spectrum disorders are common,” Johnson said.

As to the large percentage of children who were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in the past, but whose parents said they currently were not autistic, Johnson said the reasons behind that finding were not clear.

She theorized, though, that “symptoms may lessen with early intensive services, especially for milder cases.”

The authors also suggested that autism might have been considered during the initial diagnosis of a child but later dropped if the child turned out to have another disorder.

“We do know that individuals with autism can have a diagnosis early on and then lose that diagnosis, and we don’t know the factors that could explain this,” Dawson said. “Is it having received good, early behavioral intervention? Or, is there a group of kids that have better biological outcomes? Or, it may have something to do with how kids get diagnosed at different ages. Maybe as kids develop, they may not be getting the same kind of evaluations.”

The study also found that the odds of receiving an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis were four times higher for boys than girls, and that non-Hispanic black and multiracial children were less likely to have an autism spectrum disorder than white children.

Premature births account for 9.6 percent of total births and for 28 percent of newborn deaths, the data in a White Paper from the March of Dimes and other organizations found.

The highest rates of premature birth are in Africa, followed by North America (Canada and the United States combined).

“Premature births are an enormous global problem that is exacting a huge toll emotionally, physically and financially on families, medical systems and economies,” Dr. Jennifer L. Howse, March of Dimes president, said in a news release.

In the United States alone, the annual cost of caring for preterm babies and their associated health problems is more than $26 billion a year.

“If world leaders are serious about reaching the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health, then strategies and funding for reducing death and disability related to preterm birth must receive priority,” Howse said.

The March of Dimes’ Global and Regional Toll of Preterm Birth report used data from the recently published Bulletin of the World Health Organization, which probably underestimates the extent of preterm birth worldwide, according to Howse.

More than 85 percent of the world’s preterm births occur in Africa, where about 11.9 percent (four million babies a year) are born preterm. Rates in other regions are: 10.6 percent in North America; 9.1 percent in Asia; 8.1 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean; 6.4 percent in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand); and 6.2 percent in Europe.

In more affluent regions, 1,014,000 infants each year are born preterm — 7.5 percent of total births. In middle-resource regions, 7,685,000 infants are born preterm — 8.8 percent of total births. In low-resource regions, 4,171,000 infants are born preterm — 12.5 percent of total births, according to the report.

Rates of preterm birth in the United States have increased 36 percent in the past 25 years due to a number of key factors. More women over age 35 are getting pregnant and there’s increased use of assisted reproductive technologies, resulting in more multiple births, the report stated.

Infants who survive preterm birth are at risk for a number of serious lifelong health problems such as cerebral palsy, blindness, hearing loss, and learning disabilities.

Currently, there is no reliable way to prevent or delay preterm birth.

“While much can be done right now to reduce death and disability from preterm birth even in low-resource settings, we need to know more about the underlying causes of premature birth in order to develop effective prevention strategies,” Christopher P. Howson, vice president for global programs at the March of Dimes, said in the news release.

The authors of the new report said more needs to be done to educate health professionals, policy makers, women of childbearing age, and others about the global toll of preterm birth, as well as how to care for women with high-risk pregnancies and their babies.

The report is scheduled to be presented this month at the International Conference on Birth Defects and Disabilities in the Developing World, held in New Delhi, India.