Back pain during pregnancy is a common complaint. The 30% with the highest pain score reported great difficulties with normal activities. The back pain started early in pregnancy and increased over time. Young women had more pain than older women. Back pain starting during pregnancy may be a special entity and may have another origin than back pain not related to pregnancy.

Existing correlative evidence suggests that sex hormones may affect economic behavior such as risk taking and reciprocal fairness. To test this hypothesis we conducted a double-blind randomized study. Two-hundred healthy postmenopausal women aged 50 -65 years were randomly allocated to 4 weeks of treatment with estrogen, testosterone, or placebo. At the end of the treatment period, the subjects participated in a series of economic experiments that measure altruism, reciprocal fairness, trust, trustworthiness, and risk attitudes. There was no significant effect of estrogen or testosterone on any of the studied behaviors.sex hormones ͉ trust game ͉ ultimatum game ͉ risk aversion H umans display sizeable individual variation in economic behaviors. Heterogeneity is large both in the domain of personal decision making and in the domain of social interaction. Some individuals willingly take risks that others pay to avoid (1), and in situations where some individuals are altruistic and trusting, others are selfish and distrustful (2).Relatively little is known about the sources of such preference heterogeneity, but two recent findings suggest that biological factors are important. First, comparisons of the behavior of identical and fraternal twins indicate that genetics explains a sizeable part of the variation in preferences across a wide range of economic domains (3-5). Second, a controlled increase in the level of the mammalian hormone oxytocin causes more trusting behavior (6).Several studies also report that behavior is correlated with the level of sex hormones. Burnham (7) finds that subjects with a higher testosterone level are more likely to reject unfair offers in the ultimatum game, and Apicella et al. (8) find a correlation between testosterone levels and financial risk-taking behavior. Two studies report that risk-taking behavior varies over the menstrual cycle; women are more risk averse during the ovulatory phase-that is, when the estrogen level is high (9, 10). Because hormone levels in general are under strong genetic influences (11,12), these relationships between hormone levels and behavior suggest one possible channel for the intergenerational transmission of behavior.Because men and women have sharply different levels of sex hormones, it is natural to think that hormones are implied in the differences between male and female behavior. Experimental evidence shows that, on average, women tend to be more risk averse, less competitive, and more prosocial than men (13). Hormones affect the brain by binding to specific receptors, and previous work suggests that differences in the organization of brain areas in males and females depend on hormones (14-16). Hormones may affect cognition, mood, well-being, sexuality, and social behavior (16)(17)(18)(19).However, the existing evidence on the relationship between sex hormones and economic behavior is merely correlative. It does not admit causal inference. To investigate whether there is a causal link, we conducted a double-blind randomized trial, with subjects...

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The value of menorrhagia as a predictor for mild bleeding disorders has been very little studied and the results are divergent. In the present study on 30 women with objectively verified menorrhagia, we found a significantly increased prevalence of von Willebrand's disease (20%). By keeping a strict sampling and laboratory routine, and by restricting sampling to cycle days 5-7, we also obtained a very low interindividual variation of von Willebrand factor and coagulation factor VIII. We conclude that menorrhagia is a valuable predictor for coagulation and platelet disorders, and that time of sampling is of importance. This should be considered in the investigation of menorrhagia, and can be a guideline in looking for mild bleeding disorders.

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