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FRIDAY, July 13 (HealthDay) -- Convenience has become a fixture in American society. As life grows more fast-paced, people look for more corners to cut and ways to save time.

But should the desire for convenience extend to one of the most fundamental natural functions -- the act of childbirth?

A growing number of mothers and physicians apparently think so. The rate of women who deliver their babies via Caesarean section stands at a record high in the United States, accounting for more than 29 percent of all births in 2004.

While the procedure is sometimes medically necessary for preserving the lives of mother and child, many health experts believe a desire for convenience has driven the Caesarean section rate to its current heights.

And, as the use of Caesarean section has grown, so have concerns that the desire for convenience is creating unnecessary health risks.

"Caesarean section is major abdominal surgery, and, as with all major abdominal surgery, it carries major risks," said Dr. Marsden Wagner, a former director of women's and children's health for the World Health Organization. "As you do more and more Caesareans, the chance you are making things better gets less and less."

U.S. health officials are trying to cut the Caesarean delivery rate in half, bringing it down to 15 percent by 2010.

That case runs counter to some fairly strong trends.

The use of Caesarean-section surgery has increased by 38 percent since 1997. About one of every five babies was delivered through C-section then; now, the rate is more than one of every four babies.

Patient preference is one reason why the rate of C-sections is growing. Rather than waiting in suspense for labor to begin, women can schedule to the hour when they will deliver their child.

"If the woman has been told it's just as safe as vaginal childbirth, there's that temptation to schedule it when grandma's going to be in town," Wagner said.

Caesarean section also saves time for harried obstetricians who find themselves stretched too thin, he added.

"A Caesarean takes 20 minutes. A birth takes 12 hours," Wagner said. "It's a godsend for an obstetrician to do a Caesarean."

However, a mounting body of evidence is showing that C-sections are less safe than normal vaginal childbirth.

As such, the increased use of Caesarean section runs counter to a basic rule of medicine, said Dr. John Zweifler, chief of the Family and Community Medicine Department at the University of California, San Francisco-Fresno.

That rule? First, do no harm.

"At a fundamental level, it's an intervention," Zweifler said. "We should only be intervening if we're sure we're providing additional service. We don't do operations unless we know there's a good reason for it."

In a C-section, the physician cuts into a woman's abdomen to remove the baby. Infection, increased blood loss and decreased bowel function are among the risks.

There are valid reasons for having a C-section, Zweifler said. They include: The baby is in breech -- or feet first -- position in the womb; twins in the womb aren't lined up head first; or there's evidence of fetal distress or maternal hemorrhaging.

International studies have found that the optimal Caesarean rate for a country is between 10 percent and 15 percent, Wagner said. "If the rate is below 10 percent, maternal mortality goes up," he said. "If it's over 15 percent, maternal mortality goes up."

The risk of death is also is dramatically higher for C-sections than natural births, Wagner added, even when one takes into account those times when the procedure is medically necessary.

"There's a doubled risk the woman will die even if it's an elective Caesarean she's requested with no medical emergency," Wagner said.

Studies also have shown that women are three times as likely to experience severe complications during a planned C-section compared with a planned vaginal birth and are highly likely to experience complications during subsequent births.

The risk does not end with the mother. Wagner said babies born through Caesarean section are more likely to suffer respiratory distress, because vaginal childbirth acts to squeeze liquid from the child's lungs.

"Without that squeezing, the air tries to go in but is blocked by the fluid that's still in the lungs," Warner said.

Zweifler added that he's concerned that the skyrocketing Caesarean section rate will have consequences down the line that cannot be predicted.

"Sometimes, we don't appreciate all the effects of our interventions until years later," Zweifler said. "You're getting into uncharted territories here."

To combat the C-section rate, doctors are urging women to become more aware of the risks associated with the procedure.

"I don't believe there's a woman who would agree to it if they felt they were putting themselves or their baby at risk," Wagner said.

Women who've already had a C-section birth are being asked to consider a VBAC, or vaginal birth after C-section, for their next pregnancy.

Studies show that not only is it possible to have a vaginal birth following a previous C-section, but that the risks are roughly the same, Zweifler said.

"There is no difference in outcomes," he said.

More information

To learn more, visit the International Cesarean Awareness Network  .

THURSDAY, June 28 (HealthDay News) -- Men and women with multiple sclerosis are equally likely to transmit the genetic risk of the disease to their children, claims a new study that contradicts another recent study that said fathers are twice as likely as mothers to pass the risk of MS to their children.

This new study looked at 3,088 Canadian families that included a parent with MS. Of the 8,401 children in these families, 798 had MS. The researchers calculated that 9.41 percent of fathers and 9.76 percent of mothers transmitted the genetic risk of MS to their children.

"We also found there were equal numbers of daughters and sons receiving the genetic risk of the disease from their parents," study author Dr. George Ebers, a professor of clinical neurology at the University of Oxford, said in a prepared statement. "Intriguingly, we also found when half siblings both have MS, there is a clear maternal effect with mothers much more likely to be the common parent."

The study was published June 27 in the online edition of Neurology.

Ebers and his colleagues found no evidence to support a recently published study's conclusion that men are more resistant to MS because they carry a higher genetic load and, therefore, are more likely to transmit the genetic risk of the disease to their children.

"Our study involved 16 times as many people as the previous published study. It casts further doubt on the widely believed multiple gene mode of inheritance of susceptibility to MS," Ebers said.

More information

The American Medical Association has more about multiple sclerosis  .

WEDNESDAY, July 11 (HealthDay News) -- Most American babies are now routinely tested at birth for an array of lethal or disabling genetic conditions, a new study from the March of Dimes finds.

In the last year, 88 percent of the nation's 4 million newborns received 21 or more of the 29 screening tests now recommended by the American College of Medical Genetics. Two years ago, just 38 percent of newborns received these tests.

"We're in the home stretch of a campaign for all babies to be screened for 20 or more genetic disorders," said Jennifer Howse, president of the March of Dimes. This testing is critical, she said, because the conditions involved are often treatable and "essentially the effects can be reversed if caught quickly."

Sickle cell anemia, congenital hypothyroidism, cystic fibrosis, hearing loss, phenyiketonuria (PKU, an enzyme deficiency), congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and galactosemia (another enzyme deficiency) are some of the most common genetic conditions included in the American College of Medical Genetic's list of 29 recommended screenings.

The screening test for 28 of the conditions involves taking a drop of blood from a newborn's heel before the baby leaves the hospital. Functional hearing loss -- which may affect as many as three to four newborns per thousand -- requires a separate assessment by a specialist, Howse explained.

The March of Dimes' Newborn Screening Report Card, released Tuesday, notes that 13 states -- Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia and Wyoming -- plus the District of Columbia currently mandate all 29 newborn screenings. Three more states -- Montana, Kansas and West Virginia -- are in the process of implementing a 29-test system.

Progress is being made in upgrading mandatory programs in states such as Montana, because "the 21st Century is the century of the Human Genome Project and the technology is there to be able to develop the tests to find the disorders," said Denise Higgins, supervisor of newborn screening for Montana's Public Health Laboratory.

Montana expects to have its 29-condition mandatory screening program in place by the beginning of 2008, Higgins added. Until now, the state has required newborn screening tests for only four types of genetic disorders, although additional testing has been available at parents' requests. Montana is already is screening almost all of its 12,000 newborns each year and in about one-third of the cases parents have asked for expanded screening.

Pennsylvania, with nine tests required, and Arkansas, which requires seven tests, will be the only remaining states requiring newborn screening for less than 10 conditions. Washington State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Massachusetts and New Hampshire's programs now mandate between 10 and 20 tests.

"The ironic thing is that in the states that don't do all these screens, when babies show up in the ER in dire circumstances, treatment -- although too little, too late -- is automatically provided," Howse added. It makes little fiscal sense not to screen, she said, because treatment for these conditions is expensive. Even more important, "babies can die or are terribly, terribly disabled for a long period of time," Howse said.

Treatments are simple and cheap for some conditions. Dr. Mariana Glusman, a pediatrician at Children's Memorial Pediatric Uptown Clinic in Chicago, said that she has seen cases of congenital hypothyroidism caught early through newborn screening.

After treatment with a thyroid hormone, such as Synthroid, the babies develop normally, Glusman said. Without such treatment, their growth and brain development would have been retarded. "These are very rare diseases," Glusman said, referring to the 29 conditions on the screening list. "Catching them early really makes a difference."

Five of the states that screen for 28 conditions do not automatically screen for functional hearing loss, although such screening is offered. Seven other states that mandate screening for 28 conditions do not require testing for cystic fibrosis, which has a prevalence of more than one in 5,000 babies, according to the March of Dimes data. The March of Dimes only recently has begun to recommend newborn screening for cystic fibrosis.

Dr. Shari Brasner, an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City, suspects that some states may not require cystic fibrosis screening in newborns because so many parents have themselves tested before the baby is born.

"We tests for cystic fibrosis in almost all our [newborn] patients regardless of ethnicity," she said, because there is a significant prevalence in every single ethnic group.

More information

For more on newborn screening, head to the March of Dimes  .

THURSDAY, July 5 (HealthDay News) -- New research finding men and women speak roughly the same number of words each day is likely to get both sexes talking, experts say.

Researchers recorded the daily conversations of 400 university students in the United States and Mexico over a period of several days. They found that females spoke about 16,215 words each day, and males uttered an average of 15,669 words, which was considered a statistical dead heat.

"So, counter to stereotypes, there doesn't seem to be evidence that males and females talk at different rates, at least among college students," said study author James Pennebaker, the psychology department chairman at the University of Texas at Austin.

His team published the findings in the July 6 issue of Science.

Well-worn clichés about women being chatterboxes all stem from the same cultural notion -- that they love talking much more than men, experts said..

But there has never been any scientific proof to back up that stereotype, said Marianne LaFrance, a professor of psychology and women's gender and sexuality studies at Yale University.

In her own and others' work, LaFrance noted, "the research is consistently showing either no sex differences in the amount that men and women talk, or if there is a difference, then it depends on the context. For example, in a professional context, men actually outspeak women by a long shot."

That's why behavioral psychologists won't be overly surprised by the Science findings, added LaFrance, who was not involved in this research. "What's novel here isn't the findings but rather the methodology," she said..

Because of recent advances in technology, Pennebaker's group was able to design a cell phone-sized recording device that the study participants could carry in a pocket while their everyday conversations were taped by a mike clipped to their lapel. The participants quickly forgot they were wearing the recorder, Pennebaker said, and "after the first couple of hours, people rarely made mention of the device."

And unlike prior studies, where participants had some control over when and where the recorder was switched on, the device used in the new study automatically clicked on every 12 minutes to record whatever was being said -- or not said -- for the next 30 seconds.

The 19- to 25-year-olds in the study wore the voice recorders for several days each.

The result: Pennebaker's team found no gender difference whatsoever in the amount of talking done each day by these young men and women.

According to Pennebaker, it's still possible that differences in verbalization between the sexes emerge as people age. And he said the study's focus on college students might also ignore behavioral differences between men and women based on social class.

But LaFrance believes that prevailing notions of the "female chatterbox" have cultural and political roots based in sexism.

"There's this prevailing idea that women are engaged in trivia, in minutia, silly patter," she said. On the other hand, stereotypical men are thought to hang back, silent, until they have something really important to say.

But study after study refutes these pat assumptions, the Yale expert said. For example, there's ample evidence that gossip is just as popular a topic of conversation (if not more so) among men as it is among women, LaFrance said.

However, it is true that women and men tend to favor distinct subject matter when they talk, she said.

"The data shows that women do tend to talk about relationships more," LaFrance said. And it's possible that this desire by women to better understand other people, most notably their partners, has given rise to certain stereotypes.

"If I were going to guess why people think women talk more, it would be that it probably comes from what happens during [romantic] conflict," Pennebaker said. "There have been some studies to suggest that during emotional conflict, guys get quiet and women talk more."

Even though the tendency of males to "clam up" in these private disputes doesn't carry over to other social contexts, people may generalize that men are withdrawn by nature, Pennebaker said.

LaFrance agreed. "One of the biggest complaints in heterosexual relationships that women have is the 'unforthcomingness' of their male partners," she said. "That may be where part of these stereotypes come from."

But the experts agreed that men can quickly become much more verbal when the mood strikes them.

In marital conflict situations, "the data shows that it depends what they're talking about," LaFrance said.

"If she wants to talk about something that he cares about, then he will respond," she added.

And subject matter is also key, she noted: "Just get guys talking about sports or finance or lawnmowers -- then you've got another category of chatterboxes."

More information

Find about gender and the brain at the Society for Neuroscience.