Gleanings from the Net

[Butterfly]

Gleanings from the Net
A.E. Brain
By Zoe Brain
11 March, 2010


http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2010/03/gleanings-from-net.html


These should be separate posts, but I'm a bit busy with my PhD at the moment. So consider this a smorgasbord representative of this blog as a whole.

Fetal Cosmetology

    These days, we've got a lot of questions about what's been going on with the use of prenatal dexamethasone to try to prevent children from being born with atypical genitalia.

    Some clinicians prescribe this steroid off-label for pregnant women suspected of carrying a 46,XX (female) fetus with 21-hydroxylase deficiency, a form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Such girls make extra androgens, and in the womb this may cause their genitalia to form more like something in between female and male. The goal of the prenatal "dex" treatment is to prevent that virilization.