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MPs demand action over pregnancy drug cancer risk

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More than 30 MPs have urged the health secretary to act over DES, a pregnancy drug linked to cancer and fertility problems in children exposed in the womb.

The letter, coordinated by Bournemouth MP Jessica Toale, calls for a formal apology and improved cancer screening, after an ITV News investigation found DES was still being prescribed nearly a decade after it should have been withdrawn.

Stilbestrol, also known as DES, was prescribed from 1939 until the late 1970s to prevent miscarriage and suppress breast milk. Marketed as a “wonder drug”, it has since been described as one of the NHS’s most serious drug failures.

Medical research suggests the effects of DES span generations. Daughters of women given the drug during pregnancy face increased risks of rare cancers and fertility complications.

Toale said: “Frankly, it’s shocking that we don’t know how many women and families have been affected by this.

“We really need to do some work to raise awareness and to make sure we have the protocols in place to screen people.”

ITV News heard from hundreds of women who say their health was damaged by DES.

Among them is Charly Laurence, 54, from Chichester, who was exposed in utero and diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of seven. She underwent a hysterectomy at nine.

“I remember them saying you are going to have an operation – unfortunately you won’t be able to have any babies, but you can adopt when you are older,” Laurence told ITV News.

“I certainly understood the concept of not being able to have a baby.

“I remember crying a lot as a child. They just kept reminding me that I was still alive and I wasn’t going to die of the cancer.”

Her medical files show doctors in the UK were corresponding with US scientists about her case.

Though initially told she could not have children, she later had twin daughters through surrogacy. She now campaigns for improved screening for those exposed to DES.

Jan Hall, 75, from Bournemouth, believes DES contributed to her mother Rita’s death from breast cancer at the age of 32.

Her story prompted Toale to coordinate the MPs’ letter.

Other countries, including the US, banned DES in the 1970s after studies linked it to breast, cervical and vaginal cancers.

The UK government claimed doctors were told in 1973 to stop prescribing it to pre-menopausal women, but ITV News found evidence it was still being given to women as late as 1980.

As part of its wider investigation into the forced adoption scandal, ITV News also discovered DES was regularly given in homes for unmarried mothers to suppress lactation.

Earlier this month, the health secretary said the government was considering enhanced cancer screening for those affected by the use of stilboestrol, and would “look seriously at these allegations”.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Our sympathies are with anyone harmed by the historic use of Diethylstilboestrol (DES).

“The secretary of state has been clear he will look seriously at these allegations, and the government will continue to consider enhanced screening for those impacted by the use of this drug.”

Patient safety commissioner Henrietta Hughes welcomed the response and called for greater support for those affected.

She said: “Like other medication scandals that have harmed women and their families, patients weren’t given the right information to make informed decisions about their healthcare.

“When safety concerns about medications are identified, these need to be swiftly communicated to prescribers and changes embedded in clinical practice.

“For those women and their daughters exposed to this drug during pregnancy it’s vital that they receive the right information and support so that they can be confident that any harm will be detected and treated quickly.”

Pregnancy

New reporting tool targets maternal-fetal teams as pregnancy complexity rises

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A new reporting tool built specifically for obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine has launched, aimed at teams managing increasingly complex pregnancies with limited time and resources.

Trice Imaging has released Trice Workspace Reporting, which connects imaging, reporting and longitudinal patient data in a single workflow to support faster clinical decision making.

Birth rates are falling worldwide, but pregnancies are getting more complicated. Advanced maternal age, IVF-assisted pregnancies, rising obesity rates and a higher prevalence of hypertension and diabetes mean more cases now require specialist monitoring, advanced imaging and multidisciplinary care.

At the same time, clinical teams are stretched and facing growing administrative demands.

Trice Workspace Reporting brings together customisable reporting, dynamic pregnancy dating and longitudinal patient history with an AI-ready, EHR-interoperable infrastructure, all inside the company’s Tricefy image management platform.

The company says it aims to accelerate standardised and synchronised report turnaround, support timely clinical decisions and improve operational efficiency for fetal medicine services.

“Maternal fetal medicine teams are managing increasingly complex pregnancies while being asked to do more with limited time and resources,” said Mark A. Samii, chief revenue officer at Trice Imaging.

“Trice Workspace Reporting is designed to remove unnecessary friction from reporting by creating a structured digital foundation that supports today’s need for connected clinical workflows.

“It also provides a digital foundation as practices prepare for tomorrow and the evolution of AI-enabled fetal assessment, anomaly detection and outcome prediction technologies.”

Trice Imaging describes its mission as transforming the women’s health journey by connecting physicians, patients and healthcare systems. From independent practices to large hospital ecosystems, it aims to reach the entire women’s health continuum, spanning IVF and reproductive health, maternal-fetal medicine and OB/GYN, and onwards to lifelong women’s health.

For more than 17 years the firm has worked on cloud-based storage, retrieval, display, organisation and exchange of ultrasound medical images and associated information across health environments.

Its wider platform now extends to dynamic clinical reporting, AI-driven workflow optimisation, data analytics and secure patient engagement.

Trice Imaging holds regulatory and data protection clearances in 40 countries. It has offices in Miami and Stockholm, alongside a growing network of global distributors.

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Opinion

Women’s Health has waited long enough for innovation

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By Dr Fran Conti-Ramsden, clinician at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, academic at King’s College London, and chief medical officer of MEGI Health.

A woman gives birth. A few days later she goes home, often with a bag of medication for her blood pressure, and then, very often, very little structured follow-up for her heart (cardiovascular) health.

In my clinical work, and through our collaboration with Action on Pre-eclampsia, I see and hear about this postnatal cliff edge again and again, and it still shocks me.

We invest a lot of medical care and attention whilst a woman or birthing individual is pregnant, then, at the very moment emerging evidence suggests we have a window of opportunity to modify long-term health, the support falls away.

That cliff edge is a symptom of a deeper issue: we have come to treat “women’s health” as a synonym for reproductive health. Pregnancy, periods and fertility, important as they are, have crowded out everything else.

Yet the conditions that do most to shorten and limit women’s lives are not reproductive at all.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women worldwide, and it is still too readily thought of as a man’s problem.

Heart disease in women is more likely to be missed and under-treated, in part because for decades women were under-represented in the research that built our knowledge.

Pregnancy makes this vivid.

Conditions such as pre-eclampsia are not only risks to be managed for nine months; they are early warnings about a woman’s future, markers that she is more likely to develop heart disease and high blood pressure in the years to come.

We have the knowledge to act on that. What we mostly do instead is discharge her and look away.

This is exactly the kind of problem better tools should help us solve: spotting risk earlier, supporting women and their clinicians through the vulnerable postnatal window, and providing continuity where the system currently provides a drop due to lack of capacity.

Artificial intelligence and digital health have real potential here; in risk prediction, in monitoring blood pressure at home, and in helping stretched clinicians know who needs attention and when.

And yet this is not where most of the energy is going.

It is far easier to build, fund and scale an app that tracks a cycle than a tool that changes the trajectory of a woman’s heart.

So, innovation clusters at the lighter, lower-risk end of innovation, while the conditions that actually kill and disable women, and moments like the postnatal cliff, stay under-served.

Closing the women’s health gap could add at least a trillion dollars to the global economy each year, the World Economic Forum estimates, but the bigger prize is women living longer, healthier lives.

None of this means technology is a cure in itself. It is a tool, and a tool built carelessly can do harm.

Because women have been under-represented in medical data, systems trained on that data can quietly carry the same blind spots forward, deepening inequalities rather than closing them.

Responsible innovation, with clinical-grade evidence, privacy and equity designed in from the start, and tools built around real clinical pathways rather than bolted on afterwards, is not a brake on progress.

It is the only version of progress worth having.

I am optimistic, because a serious community is forming around exactly these questions and the appetite to get it right is real.

It is why, at MEGI, we are bringing clinicians, researchers, founders, regulators and investors together for our AI × Women’s Health summit on 25 June.

If we keep our focus on the conditions that matter most to women’s lives, and build the tools to meet them responsibly, the postnatal cliff edge could become something else entirely: the moment the system finally catches her and delivers preventative healthcare.

AI × Women’s Health: Innovation, Challenges and Opportunities summit is taking place on Thursday 25 June 2026 at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering. The event is free and is fully booked and operating a waiting list. Join the waiting list here.

About Dr Fran Conti-Ramsden

Dr Fran Conti-Ramsden is a UK Obstetrics and Gynaecology registrar and Chadburn Clinical Lecturer at KCL passionate about transforming women’s health through technology and innovation.

Combining NHS clinical experience with an MRC-funded PhD, recent NHS Clinical AI fellowship and commercial role as Chief Medical Officer at Megi health, she works at the intersection of clinical medicine, data science, technology and AI.

Her current programme of research focuses on the intersection of healthcare and technology; leveraging advances such as smartphone based vital signs capture and large language models to drive forward scalable innovation in maternal cardiovascular care.

She has published over 20 peer-reviewed manuscripts (See gScholar, h-index 12), including award-winning work recognized by Hypertension Journal.

She was awarded an AI visionary award in 2025 by Health Innovation KSS was the recipient of the 2024 International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy Zuspan prize.

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Pregnancy

Women with pre-eclampsia at increased risk of chronic kidney disease, study finds

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Women who develop pre-eclampsia face a higher risk of chronic kidney disease and high blood pressure later in life, new research suggests.

The amount of protein found in the urine during pregnancy may help identify those at greatest risk of developing long-term health problems.

Pre-eclampsia usually involves high blood pressure and increased protein in the urine. Some women also experience severe headaches and changes to their vision.

The condition cannot be treated during pregnancy and, in some cases, labour must be induced early to protect both the woman and baby.

The study found that the condition may be linked to longer-term health problems.

Anne Høy Seemann Vestergaard, a medical doctor and PhD at the department of clinical medicine at Aarhus University, said: “What we can see is a clear association between pre-eclampsia and the development of high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease later in life.”

The researchers found that the amount of protein passed in the urine during pregnancy was linked to the risk of developing chronic conditions after giving birth.

Protein in the urine can indicate that the kidneys are not filtering blood normally.

Vestergaard said: “The most surprising finding was how clearly the amount of protein in the urine during pre-eclampsia was linked to the risk of later high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease. Women with moderate to severe protein excretion had a higher risk of both conditions compared with women with low or no protein excretion.”

Among women with pre-eclampsia and moderate to severe levels of protein in the urine, around one in 20 developed chronic kidney disease within 10 years and around one in six developed high blood pressure.

Most women in the study did not develop long-term complications, but the researchers said the increased risk should still be taken seriously because the potential effects can be severe.

Vestergaard said: “At first glance, this may sound like a low number, but it represents a markedly increased risk when the groups are compared. In the group with pre-eclampsia and high levels of protein in the urine, around 1 in 20 women developed chronic kidney disease within ten years, including early stages of the disease, compared with around 1 in 100 in the group with lower or no protein excretion.”

She added: “That is a considerable number in light of the fact that chronic kidney disease is a potentially serious condition that can progress to kidney failure if isn’t diagnosed early.”

The findings suggest women who experience pre-eclampsia may benefit from more systematic monitoring after pregnancy.

Vestergaard said: “Our study suggests that these women may benefit from monitoring of blood pressure and kidney function after pregnancy.”

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