The research constitutes some of the first evidence that the condition is associated with modifications in the brain before childbirth.Postpartum depression affects about one in every seven women who give birth, but little is known about what happens in the brains of pregnant women who experience it. A new study begins to shed some light.Researchers scanned the brains of dozens of women in the weeks before and after childbirth and found that two brain areas involved in the processing and control of emotions increased in size in women who developed symptoms of postpartum depression.The results, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, constitute some of the first evidence that postpartum depression is associated with changes in the brain during pregnancy.Researchers found that women with symptoms of depression in the first month after giving birth also had increases in the volume of their amygdala, a brain area that plays a key role in emotional processing. Women who rated their childbirth experience as difficult or stressful — a perception that is often associated with postpartum depression — also showed increases in the volume of the hippocampus, a brain area that helps regulate emotions.“This is really the first step in trying to understand how does the brain change in people who have a normal course of pregnancy and then those who experience perinatal depression, and what can we do about it,” said Dr. Sheila Shanmugan, an assistant professor of psychiatry, obstetrics-gynecology and radiology at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the study.“The big takeaways are about how there are these really profound brain changes during pregnancy and how now we’re seeing it in depression circuitry specifically,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The findings showed the highest mortality occurred among infants who were Black, lived in Southern states or had fetal birth defects.Infant mortality increased along with births in most states with abortion bans in the first 18 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to new research.The findings, in two studies published Thursday in the journal JAMA, also suggest that abortion bans can have the most significant effects on people who are struggling economically or who are in other types of challenging circumstances, health policy experts said.“The groups that are most likely to have children as a result of abortion bans are also individuals who are most likely, for a number of different reasons, to have higher rates of infant mortality,” said Alyssa Bilinski, a professor of health policy at Brown University, who was not involved in the research.Overall, infant mortality was 6 percent higher than expected in states that implemented abortion bans, said Alison Gemmill, one of the researchers, who is a demographer and perinatal epidemiologist in the department of population, family and reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That number reflected increases in nine states, decreases in four and no change in one.Dr. Gemmill said that among non-Hispanic Black infants, mortality was 11 percent higher after abortion bans were implemented than would have been expected. Also, there were more babies born with congenital birth defects, situations in which women have been able to terminate their pregnancies if not for abortion bans. Overall, the researchers found that in the states that implemented near-total abortion bans or bans after six weeks’ gestation during that period, there were 478 more deaths of babies in their first year of life after the bans were implemented than would have been expected based on previous years’ data.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

By 2060, new dementia cases per year could double to one million because of the growing population of older Americans, a study predicts.The number of people in the United States who develop dementia each year will double over the next 35 years to about one million annually by 2060, a new study estimates, and the number of new cases per year among Black Americans will triple.The increase will primarily be due to the growing aging population, as many Americans are living longer than previous generations. By 2060, some of the youngest baby boomers will be in their 90s and many millennials will be in their 70s. Older age is the biggest risk factor for dementia. The study found that the vast majority of dementia risk occurred after age 75, increasing further as people reached age 95.The study, published Monday in Nature Medicine, found that adults over 55 had a 42 percent lifetime risk of developing dementia. That is considerably higher than previous lifetime risk estimates, a result the authors attributed to updated information about Americans’ health and longevity and the fact that their study population was more diverse than that of previous studies, which have had primarily white participants.Some experts said the new lifetime risk estimate and projected increase in yearly cases could be overly high, but they agreed that dementia cases would soar in the coming decades.“Even if the rate is significantly lower than that, we’re still going to have a big increase in the number of people and the family and societal burden of dementia because of just the growth in the number of older people, both in the United States and around the world,” said Dr. Kenneth Langa, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, who has researched dementia risk and was not involved in the new study.Dementia already takes an enormous toll on American families and the country’s health care system. More than six million Americans currently have dementia, nearly 10 percent of people 65 and older, research has found. Experts say that each year in the United States, dementia causes more than 100,000 deaths and accounts for more than $600 billion in caregiving and other costs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Washington State’s program is the first, but other states are expected to try allowing pharmacists to prescribe the pills to counter growing efforts to curtail abortion access.Pharmacists have begun prescribing abortion pills, not simply dispensing them — a development intended to broaden abortion access.The new effort is small so far — a pilot program in Washington State — but the idea is expected to be tried in other states where abortion remains legal.“I think it is going to expand, and it is expanding,” said Michael Hogue, chief executive of the American Pharmacists Association, a national professional organization, which is not involved in the new program and does not take a position on abortion.Many states now allow pharmacists to prescribe a variety of medications, he said, adding that in his organization’s view, it makes sense to have “someone so accessible in a local community be able to provide safe access to therapies that might sometimes be difficult to get.”Supporters of abortion rights consider pharmacist prescribing part of an effort to open as many avenues as possible at a time when abortion pills are facing growing attacks from abortion opponents.Pills are now the method used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States. But a lawsuit intended to force the Food and Drug Administration to sharply restrict mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen, was recently revived after the Supreme Court turned away the case, saying the original plaintiffs lacked the standing to sue. The Texas attorney general recently sued an abortion provider in New York for sending abortion pills to a patient in Texas. And abortion rights supporters are concerned that a 151-year-old federal anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act could be invoked by the incoming Trump administration to try to prevent the mailing of abortion medication.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

But the report, on the experiences of 13 patients, found that the drug had no benefit for some people and that some who benefited said the improvement didn’t last.Can Paxlovid treat long Covid? A new report suggests it might help some patients, but which patients might benefit remains unclear.The report, published Monday in the journal Communications Medicine, describes the cases of 13 long Covid patients who took extended courses of the antiviral drug. Results were decidedly mixed: Nine patients reported some improvement, but only five said it lasted. Four reported no improvement at all.Perhaps more than anything, the report underscores that nearly five years after the pandemic began, there is still little known about what can help the millions of people with long Covid. While some people improve on their own or with various therapies and medications, no treatment has yet been shown to be widely successful.“People with long Covid are eager for treatments that can help,” said Alison Cohen, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who is an author of the new report and has long Covid herself. “There’s been a lot of research, but it continues to be slow going.”Paxlovid, made by Pfizer, is considered a tantalizing prospect because it can prevent severe illness during active Covid infections and because patients who take the five-day course during the infection have been less likely to develop long Covid later.In addition, a theory that some long Covid cases may be caused by remnants of virus in the body suggests that an antiviral like Paxlovid might vanquish those symptoms by extinguishing lingering virus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Some women are stocking up on the medications, saying they are concerned that the new administration could take steps to restrict access.The day after the election, Beth Ryan ordered two packages of emergency contraception pills and had them sent to her 27-year-old daughter.“We all felt so helpless,” said Ms. Ryan, who lives in Florida, describing her fear that a second Trump administration could further threaten access to reproductive health care. After one of her daughter’s friends, who handles online orders at Target, said he was seeing a burst of demand for Plan B morning-after pills, Ms. Ryan purchased Plan B from Walmart for her daughter in Colorado.“I think I felt better because I could control something,” she said. “I mean, it was something that you could do.”Across the country, some women are taking similar steps, ordering emergency contraceptives, abortion pills or both.There is no national data, but interviews with numerous providers of abortion and contraceptive drugs point to a surge in demand in the immediate aftermath of the election.Wisp, a telehealth provider of medications for reproductive health, said that during the five days after the election it sold more than 10,000 Plan B pills, which do not require a prescription; it sold fewer than 5,000 pills in the same Wednesday-through-Sunday span the week before the election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The ruling found that two state laws — one barring use of abortion pills, and one banning all forms of abortion — violated the state Constitution’s “fundamental right to make health care decisions.” A Wyoming judge ruled on Monday that two state abortion bans — including the first state law specifically banning the use of pills for abortion — violated the Wyoming Constitution and could not be enforced.Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County District Court wrote in her ruling that both the ban on medication abortion and a broader ban against all methods of abortion “impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women.” She added, “The abortion statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of a pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people.”Enforcement of the two abortion bans, passed last year, had been temporarily halted by Judge Owens while the court case proceeded. Her decision on Monday blocks the laws permanently, although the state is expected to appeal. Efforts to reach the state attorney general’s office and the governor’s office were unsuccessful on Monday night.The suit to block the bans was filed by a group of plaintiffs that included two abortion providers in Wyoming; an obstetrician-gynecologist who often treats high-risk pregnancies; an emergency-room nurse; a fund that gives financing to abortion patients; and a woman who said her Jewish faith required access to abortion if a pregnant woman’s physical or mental health or life was in danger.An amendment to the Wyoming Constitution, approved by an overwhelming majority of the state’s voters in 2012, guarantees adults the right to make their own health care decisions.In court last year, the state, represented by Jay Jerde, a special assistant attorney general for Wyoming, argued that even though doctors and other health providers must be involved in abortions, there were many instances in which abortion was not “health care” because “it’s not restoring the woman’s body from pain, physical disease or sickness.”Mr. Jerde also argued that the constitutional amendment allowing people to make decisions about their own health care did not apply to abortion because terminating a pregnancy affected not just the woman making the decision, but the fetus as well.Judge Owens rejected both of those arguments. She wrote: “The uncontested facts establish that the abortion statutes fail to accomplish any of the asserted interests by the state. The state did not present any evidence refuting or challenging the extensive medical testimony presented by the plaintiffs.”Dr. Giovannina Anthony, an obstetrician-gynecologist and abortion provider who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, said on Monday night that she was “grateful and relieved that the judge agreed that abortion is health care and that abortion bans violate the rights of pregnant women.”Dr. Anthony said she expected the state to appeal. “This is not the end of the fight in Wyoming, but for now we can continue to provide evidence-based care without fear of a prison sentence.”

The Supreme Court ruled in June that the original plaintiffs, anti-abortion doctors and groups, did not have standing to sue. Now three states are trying to continue the legal fight.A lawsuit seeking to sharply restrict the abortion pill mifepristone — a case the Supreme Court threw out this year — has re-emerged in a version that presents new challenges for abortion-rights supporters and the federal government’s ability to regulate abortion medication.The revised lawsuit was filed this month by the conservative state attorneys general of three states — Missouri, Idaho and Kansas — against the Food and Drug Administration in the same federal district court in Texas as the original case. It seeks to reverse numerous regulatory changes the F.D.A. has made since 2016 that greatly expanded access to mifepristone.It also asks for new restrictions, including to outlaw the medication for anyone under 18. And it takes aim at the fast-growing practice of prescribing abortion pills through telemedicine and mailing them to patients, including those in states with abortion bans.In the United States, abortion pills are prescribed up to 12 weeks into pregnancy and are now used in nearly two-thirds of abortions. The typical regimen involves mifepristone, which blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy development, followed 24 to 48 hours later by misoprostol, which causes contractions like a miscarriage. Decades of research has found the pills to be overwhelmingly safe, and serious complications rare.The original lawsuit, filed in 2022 by anti-abortion doctors and groups, was rejected in June by the Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling. The court said that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue because they couldn’t show they had been harmed by the F.D.A.’s decisions on mifepristone. But that ruling didn’t extinguish the case’s chance of being revived.Last year, Missouri, Idaho and Kansas petitioned to join the suit at the lower court level and were granted the status of intervenors. The states were denied permission to intervene at the Supreme Court level, but after the original plaintiffs’ claims were rejected, the states remained part of the lower court case, and this month they filed an amended complaint as plaintiffs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Anna Nusslock never expected to be denied an emergency abortion by a hospital in California, a state with some of the strongest abortion rights protections.In February, Dr. Nusslock, 36, a chiropractor in Eureka, Calif., went to the nearest emergency room, at Providence St. Joseph Hospital, after her water broke just 15 weeks into pregnancy. Doctors said one of the twins she was carrying would not survive and the other had almost no chance, according to medical records. They said that if the pregnancy was not terminated, she could face infection, hemorrhaging and threats to her future fertility.But because fetal heart tones could still be detected, a doctor at the Catholic-affiliated hospital said the institution’s policy prohibited providing abortion unless Dr. Nusslock’s life was at risk, according to her medical records. After several hours, her husband drove her to the next closest hospital, where she arrived hemorrhaging and passing a blood clot the size of an apple. She expelled one fetus and was rushed into the operating room so the other fetus could be removed, records show.“I thought I would be safe here from things like this,” Dr. Nusslock said, “from people taking away choices from me and leaving me in danger.”Similar situations have occurred in states with abortion bans, but California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said Dr. Nusslock’s case shows they can happen “even in California, a place that is very strongly pro-choice.”On Monday, the attorney general filed suit against the company that operates Providence St. Joseph, charging that the hospital violated a California law requiring hospitals with emergency rooms to provide care to prevent not only death, but “serious injury or illness.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

As hormones surge, some brain areas shrink in what scientists say may be a fine-tuning that helps mothers bond with and care for their babies.Research is revealing intriguing clues about how pregnancy changes the brain. Studies scanning women’s brains before and after pregnancy have found that certain brain networks, especially those involved in social and emotional processing, shrink during pregnancy, possibly undergoing a fine-tuning process in preparation for parenting. Such changes correspond with surges in pregnancy hormones, especially estrogen, and some last at least two years after childbirth, researchers have found.A new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, adds to the picture by documenting with M.R.I.s brain changes throughout one woman’s pregnancy. It confirms previous results and adds detail, including that white matter fibers showed greater ability to efficiently transmit signals between brain cells, a change that evaporated once the baby was born.“What’s very interesting about this current study is that it provides such a detailed mapping,” said Elseline Hoekzema, a neuroscientist who heads the Pregnancy and the Brain Lab at Amsterdam University Medical Center and has helped lead studies analyzing brain scans of more than 100 women before and after pregnancy.Dr. Hoekzema, who was not involved in the new study, said it showed that along with previously documented “longer-lasting changes in brain structure and function, more subtle, transient changes also occur.”Dr. Ronald Dahl, director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new study, said the emerging research reflected the key role of hormones in transitions like puberty and pregnancy, guiding neurological shifts in priorities and motivations.“There is that sense that it’s affecting so many of these systems,” he said. The study participant, Elizabeth Chrastil, is a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine. She became pregnant in 2019, at 38, after in vitro fertilization. That allowed precise tracking of her pregnancy from the start.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.