Most women use medication during pregnancy. Yet, selecting appropriate drugs and doses is challenging. In a new The Lancet article, physicians and researchers from the Radboud university medical center, Maastricht UMC+, Imperial College London, and the University of Liverpool introduce a shared decision-making approach combining ethical principles and a pregnant woman’s values with existing evidence. They use the example of sertraline, a commonly prescribed antidepressant in pregnancy, to illustrate the advocated decision-making process.

A new study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research evaluated the effectiveness of Inner Dragon, a multifaceted game embedded within the Smoke Free smoking cessation app that prompts users to care for a customizable pet dragon, whose growth reflects the person’s progress towards quitting smoking. The game also encourages use of smoking cessation tools within the app. Among the study participants who had access to Inner Dragon, overall engagement with the Smoke Free app increased by 20 percent compared to those who did not have access to the game, and direct use of the app’s smoking cessation tools increased by a notable 30 percent. 

The researchers used contemporary data from the U.K. Biobank, a database of medical histories and genetic, lifestyle and other disease risk factors, to study the effect of those early-life sugar restrictions on health outcomes of adults conceived in the U.K. just before and after the end of wartime sugar rationing.