Many obstetricians resist giving epidural anesthesia during the late stage of delivery because they believe it lengthens the duration of labor. But a clinical trial by Chinese researchers has found that it does not. The study, in Obstetrics & Gynecology, randomized 400 women in labor to receive either a standard epidural anesthetic or a saline solution in an identical container. Neither the patients nor the health care providers knew who was receiving which. The average time from full dilation of the cervix to delivery was 51 minutes in the saline group and 52 minutes in the women who got the anesthetic, a difference of no clinical significance. The only difference between groups was that the women who received the anesthetic expressed greater satisfaction with their pain control.

Hypertension in midlife tied to dementia

Women with high blood pressure in their 40s are at increased risk for dementia in later years, researchers report. But the finding does not hold for men. Beginning in 1964, investigators collected health and lifestyle information on 5,646 men and women when they were 30 to 35 years old, and again when they were in their 40s. From 1996 to 2015, 532 of them were found to have Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. The study is in Neurology. Hypertension in women in their 30s was not associated with dementia. But women who were hypertensive at an average age of 44 had a 68 percent higher risk for dementia than those who had normal blood pressure at that age. High blood pressure in men in their 30s or 40s was not associated with later dementia, but the study's senior author, Rachel Whitmer, said that studies have tied hypertension in men in their 50s to later dementia.

Shorter treatment for TB proves effective

Taking the right antibiotics for just nine months may be as effective against drug-resistant tuberculosis as taking them for two years, as is currently recommended, according to preliminary findings from an international study. Results from the trial, which is overseen by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease and UCL (formerly the University College London), were released at a conference in Mexico. The trial includes 424 patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis in Ethiopia, Mongolia, South Africa and Vietnam. There were "favorable outcomes" in about 78 percent of those treated for nine months, the authors said — close to the 81 percent success rate observed in clinical trials using the two-year regimen. The short regimen also appeared to work in patients co-infected with HIV.