WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A 29-year-old woman gave birth to six babies in Poland on Monday, in what is believed to be the country’s first-ever case of sextuplets. The mother and newborns are said to be doing well.
The babies, four of whom are girls, were born through cesarean section at University Hospital in Krakow in southern Poland.
The babies were born in the pregnancy’s 29th week and their individual weights range from 890 grams (31.40 ounces) to 1,300 grams (45.90 ounces), hospital spokeswoman Maria Wlodkowska said. The babies are fine but have been placed in incubators to assist their development, she said.
Only one in nearly 5 billion pregnancies leads to sextuplets.
“It is the first time in Poland that sextuplets are born, and it is rare in the world,” said chief of the hospital’s neonatology ward, Prof. Ryszard Lauterbach.
He said it came as a surprise because doctors were expecting five babies.
“We had five teams with five incubators ready waiting, and when all were taken another baby, a girl, appeared,” Lauterbach said on TVN24.
He praised doctors for getting the pregnancy to the 29th week.
There was widespread rejoice across Poland over the news.
President Andrzej Duda congratulated the parents and the doctors on Twitter, while the local football club, Cracovia, has offered life-long tickets and said they were keeping fingers crossed for the babies.
“We don’t know who your parents are rooting for, but we are giving you, kids, permanent subscription to tickets,” Cracovia said in a tweet.
The babies have a 2 ½-year-old brother.
In 2008, quintuplets, all girls, were born in the same hospital in the 26th week of pregnancy, weighing between 570 grams (20.11 ounces) and 800 grams (28.22 ounces.) After three months of hospitalization, part of that time on respirators and drips, they were discharged and they recently paid a courtesy visit to the hospital with their parents.
Teens who have obesity surgery lose as much weight as those who have the operation as adults and are more likely to have other health problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure go away, a study finds.
The results suggest there’s a benefit from not waiting to address obesity. Researchers say longer study is still needed to know lifetime effects of this radical surgery and that it’s a personal decision whether and when to try it.
FILE – In this Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015 file photo, Miranda Taylor, 20, poses for a portrait outside Christ College of Nursing and Health Science in Cincinnati. When she was 16 and weighed 265 pounds, she had obesity surgery. Taylor lost more than 100 pounds, along with severe depression, pre-diabetes and an obesity-related hormonal condition. “I feel awesome. It’s like a new life,” she says. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
The study was published Thursday by the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the Combating Childhood Obesity conference in Houston. The National Institutes of Health paid for it, and some researchers consult for makers of obesity surgery tools.
The damaging effects of obesity accumulate, and the risk of developing other diseases and dying prematurely rises the longer someone goes. Surgery is usually reserved for people who can’t lose enough weight through other means — diet, exercise and sometimes medicines — and are severely obese.
Researchers led by Dr. Thomas Inge at the University of Colorado wanted to know whether it’s better or safer to have it in mid-life, the most common time now, or sooner before many of those other health problems appear or do much harm.
They compared results from two studies of gastric bypass surgery, which creates a much smaller stomach pouch, in 161 teens and 396 adults who had been obese since they were teens. Five years after their operations, both groups had lost 26% to 29% of their weight.
Diabetes went into remission in 86% of teens and 53% of adults who had that disease before their operations; high blood pressure did the same in 68% of teens and 41% of adults. Some side effects were more common in teens, and they were twice as likely to need a second operation.
One troubling finding: Although about 2 percent of each group died, two of the teens did so from drug overdoses, suggesting substance abuse and self-harm may be a concern.
Overall, the results are consistent with an earlier study comparing teens and adults, Ted Adams of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City wrote in a commentary in the journal.
“Almost 6% of adolescents in the United States are severely obese, and bariatric surgery is now the only successful, long-term treatment option” for them, he wrote.
Most obese teens stay obese as adults, and adults who were obese as teens have worse health than people who started to weigh too much at an older age, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice to have surgery earlier than later, he warned.
Marilynn Marchione can be followed at @MMarchioneAP
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — George Clooney is hoping the media will be gentler to Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, after she gave birth to a baby boy.
“I think people should be a little kinder. She’s a young woman who just had a baby, you know?” Clooney told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, during a photocall with their newborn son, in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle, Windsor, south England, Wednesday May 8, 2019. (Dominic Lipinski/Pool via AP)
Clooney is a good friend of Meghan and Prince Harry. He and his lawyer wife Amal attended the royal wedding last year, and Amal was one of the guests at Meghan’s baby shower. Clooney has been outspoken in his defense of Meghan, a former actress and American, who has been the subject of harsh gossip in some publications.
At the premiere of his new Hulu series “Catch-22,” Clooney said the media scrutiny will likely intensify now that the baby, who was named Archie, has arrived. He conceded that some of that comes with the royal territory.
“If you’re a royal, that’s what you have to do,” he said. “It’s the other versions of it: Going to interview people’s parents, that kind of stuff. It starts to step into a really dark place.”
George Clooney and Amal Clooney arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of “Catch-22” at TCL Chinese Theatre on Tuesday, May 7, 2019. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Besides celebrating upcoming May 17 debut of “Catch-22,” Clooney was also in a joyous mood because of the release of two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who had been imprisoned in Myanmar. They were released early Tuesday after more than a year behind bars. They won the Pulitzer Prize last month for international reporting, along with the AP.
“My wife spent the last year, every day, with (Reuters chief counsel) Gail Gove and with (Reuters editor-in-chief) Stephen Adler, working, as hard as you could work, behind the scenes, to get these guys out,” he said.
“And last night, for my (58th) birthday, at my birthday dinner, those two men walked out,” Clooney continued. “And I have to tell you, I couldn’t be more proud of my wife. I couldn’t be more proud of Reuters and the way they stuck up for journalism.”
He added: “It’s a dangerous time to be a journalist. So, to win one, I’m very proud of my wife. And congratulations to everyone — and the AP.”
