Wall Street Week Ahead: Earnings, money flows to push stocks higher

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With earnings momentum on the rise, the S&P 500 seems to have few hurdles ahead as it continues to power higher, its all-time high a not-so-distant goal.


The U.S. equity benchmark closed the week at a fresh five-year high on strong housing and labor market data and a string of earnings that beat lowered expectations.


Sector indexes in transportation <.djt>, banks <.bkx> and housing <.hgx> this week hit historic or multiyear highs as well.


Michael Yoshikami, chief executive at Destination Wealth Management in Walnut Creek, California, said the key earnings to watch for next week will come from cyclical companies. United Technologies reports on Wednesday while Honeywell is due to report Friday.


"Those kind of numbers will tell you the trajectory the economy is taking," Yoshikami said.


Major technology companies also report next week, but the bar for the sector has been lowered even further.


Chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices , which is due Tuesday, are expected to underperform as PC sales shrink. AMD shares fell more than 10 percent Friday after disappointing results from its larger competitor, Intel . Still, a chipmaker sector index <.sox> posted its highest weekly close since last April.


Following a recent underperformance, an upside surprise from Apple on Wednesday could trigger a return to the stock from many investors who had abandoned ship.


Other major companies reporting next week include Google , IBM , Johnson & Johnson and DuPont on Tuesday, Microsoft and 3M on Thursday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.


CASH POURING IN, HOUSING DATA COULD HELP


Perhaps the strongest support for equities will come from the flow of cash from fixed income funds to stocks.


The recent piling into stock funds -- $11.3 billion in the past two weeks, the most since 2000 -- indicates a riskier approach to investing from retail investors looking for yield.


"From a yield perspective, a lot of stocks still yield a great deal of money and so it is very easy to see why money is pouring into the stock market," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.


"You are just not going to see people put a lot of money to work in a 10-year Treasury that yields 1.8 percent."


Housing stocks <.hgx>, already at a 5-1/2 year high, could get a further bump next week as investors eye data expected to support the market's perception that housing is the sluggish U.S. economy's bright spot.


Home resales are expected to have risen 0.6 percent in December, data is expected to show on Tuesday. Pending home sales contracts, which lead actual sales by a month or two, hit a 2-1/2 year high in November.


The new home sales report on Friday is expected to show a 2.1 percent increase.


The federal debt ceiling negotiations, a nagging worry for investors, seemed to be stuck on the back burner after House Republicans signaled they might support a short-term extension.


Equity markets, which tumbled in 2011 after the last round of talks pushed the United States close to a default, seem not to care much this time around.


The CBOE volatility index <.vix>, a gauge of market anxiety, closed Friday at its lowest since April 2007.


"I think the market is getting somewhat desensitized from political drama given, this seems to be happening over and over," said Destination Wealth Management's Yoshikami.


"It's something to keep in mind, but I don't think it's what you want to base your investing decisions on."


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)



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Way of the World: Sheriff of Global Banking Rides Into Town







WASHINGTON — Watch out Wall Street and look sharp City of London — one of the sheriffs of global capitalism is riding into town. An elegant Frenchwoman with a shiny silver bob and the smooth manners of a veteran cabinet minister and white-shoe lawyer, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, doesn’t conform to the most common stereotypes of a tough law enforcer. But, on the eve of the World Economic Forum, the chummy annual gathering of the world’s business elites, Ms. Lagarde delivered a strong call for firmer financial regulation around the world.




Speaking at a news conference, Ms. Lagarde decried the “waning commitment” to tighter financial regulations and said that finishing the post-2008 effort to fix the world’s banks should be one of the three economic priorities in 2013. In an interview afterward, Ms. Lagarde elaborated on the theme, warning that robust lobbying threatened to weaken the efforts by regulators and legislators to force banks to hold more and better capital against their loans and to be more transparent.


“I see a lot of pressure coming out of the industry,” Ms. Lagarde said. A former corporate lawyer, Ms. Lagarde isn’t naïve about that muscular lobbying, or unsympathetic to its motivations. It is, she says, “clearly part of their jobs. They will naturally lobby to support more flexible, more accommodating regulations.”


But because of the special role of finance in the economy — including the special support the state gives banks in times of trouble — the “sector warrants stronger regulation, and stronger buffers against potential risks and regular tests of their capacity to resist shocks.”


“We believe,” Ms. Lagarde said at her news conference, “that it is important for regulators, for supervisors, for authorities to resist aggressive industry push-back.”


In our conversation, Ms. Lagarde was quick to rebuff some of the bankers’ arguments against stronger financial regulation.


When I asked her whether the weak world economy was a reason to delay tougher rules, she was uncompromising, repeating her point twice for emphasis: “It’s always the wrong time here. It’s always the wrong time.”


She was equally firm when I ventured the complaint of some U.S. banks that the contested Basel III regulations that set rules for banks around the world were anti-American and placed an unfair burden on U.S. companies.


“You know, when I was sitting on the other side of the pond, I heard exactly the same story from the European banks, that it was anti-European and overly pro-American,” Ms. Lagarde said. “So I’m sure there must be something right about it. I think the Basel committee is trying to do as good a job as it can and is trying to resist the pressure. I certainly hope that it continues doing so.”


It is just a little more than four years since a financial crisis ripped apart the world economy, destroying millions of jobs and stunting millions of lives. Those wounds are still so fresh that you may be surprised to learn that banks, whose risky behavior caused the crash in the first place, would be putting up much of a fight at all against tighter rules.


“It’s human nature,” Ms. Lagarde told me. “The moment the situation improves, you tend to forget about the hard times. And on this occasion, I think it is the job of policy makers, of supervisors, of regulators to constantly have that in the back of their mind and as an objective to avoid a relapse of what happened back in 2008.”


The major current battle is about capital — how much banks should hold and how liquid it should be. Ms. Lagarde sees two other big fights in the offing.


One is the regulation of so-called shadow banking, the vast world of financial transactions that are done outside open exchanges, hidden from public balance sheets or conducted by nonbank financial institutions. “Shadow banking is clearly developing at a steady pace,” Ms. Lagarde warned in our interview, and “currently escapes a degree of regulation and supervision.”


Ms. Lagarde’s second worry is what she called “forum shopping” or “fragmentation.” This is the Gérard Depardieu story on an institutional level. Just as today’s globalized world allows the French actor to cross borders and trade passports to escape high French taxes, global financial institutions can “shop” for the national home base that provides the lightest regulation. But while that may be good for individual bankers and their firms, it is dangerous for the world economy.


This distinction between what is in the interest of the banks and what is in the public interest was at the heart of Ms. Lagarde’s comments.


Before 2008, a lot of people — politicians, journalists, regulators — conflated the two.


Particularly in the United States and in Britain, Charlie Wilson’s argument that what was good for General Motors was good for America started to feel true about the economic powerhouses on Wall Street and in the City of London.


Ms. Lagarde runs the world’s most important public global financial institution. When most of us think of the I.M.F. at all, it is usually as the stern enforcer of the sometimes harsh rules of international capitalism. That’s why we should take Ms. Lagarde’s call for tougher financial regulation particularly seriously.


“My hope is that it’s improved for the public interest, not for the banks’ interests,” she told me.


“And those are not necessarily one and the same?” I asked.


She responded definitively and with a warm laugh: “Of course not!”


Chrystia Freeland is editor of Thomson Reuters Digital.


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Why Won’t the NRA Say Anything About Its (Possibly Fake) New Video Game?






If this app is, in fact, an unlicensed kind of hoax using the NRA acronym without permission, you’d think the NRA might want to squash the brand association quickly. Despite the gun lobby’s slow response to the Newtown massacre, the NRA isn’t afraid of issuing cease and desists or suing President Obama, the District of Columbia, or the Department of Justice.


RELATED: One Month After Newtown, NRA Releases First-Person Shooter Game with AK-47






What’s more, as ArsTechnica’s Kyl Orland points out, the NRA’s earlier efforts at officially licensed video games have been successful in the lobby’s seemingly unending efforts to the turn gun-violence debate away from guns and toward other industries accused of stoking violence. Orland writes:



So Practice Range fits right into the NRA’s arguments about video games’ insidious effects on our society. “There’s nothing wrong with guns in video games per se,” the organization seems to be saying; “the problem is the way those guns are used by most of the big-money game industry in service of ultra-violent revenge fantasies. If only the game industry could use its immense influence and power to promote responsible, safe use of guns, as we have with our humble app, the world might be a different place!”



If the app isn’t the NRA’s, then the app and the controversy surrounding it would seem to present an opportune time for NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre to hammer home his point about violence in video games. In his notorious post-Newtown press conference, LaPierre in the days following blamed the gaming industry for mass violence:



And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.



The video-game industry has been reeling as it struggles to put together a lobbying defense of its own. Of course, all these theories would be moot if the app is indeed the NRA’s. As of today, the app is still up in the iTunes Store.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Designers Create Dream Inauguration Dresses for Michelle Obama







Style News Now





01/17/2013 at 01:00 PM ET











Michelle Obama Inauguration
Courtesy L’Wren Scott; Inset: Cliff Owen/AP


It’s a big week for Michelle Obama: she turns 49 today, joined Twitter this morning and will stand by as her husband is sworn in to his second presidential term on Monday. (And here we thought our weeks were busy …)


Though we’ve been captivated by many of Mrs. O’s past dresses, we’re quite excited to see what she wears for Monday’s Inauguration and parties. According to WWD, the First Lady’s staff reached out to several different designers for samples and ideas — Derek Lam, Marchesa, Michael Kors, Prabal Gurung, Tory Burch, Tracy Reese, Narciso Rodriguez, Naeem Khan, Thakoon and Jason Wu among them.


WWD also asked several designers to create dream dress sketches for the First Lady and her fashion-forward daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11. Some of our favorites include L’Wren Scott’s belted, lace-topped blue gown (left), and Nicole Miller’s stunning strapless red dress, with youthful, complementary blue frocks for the girls (below).



Michelle Obama Inauguration
Courtesy Nicole Miller


For the 2009 Inauguration, Obama selected a white one-shoulder dress by then-newbie Jason Wu; her stunning style moment instantly put the young designer on the map.


The dress was “a masterpiece,” the First Lady said one year after its debut. “It is simple, it’s elegant, and it comes from this brilliant young mind, someone who is living the American Dream.” No doubt her choice on Monday will be equally as beautiful — and important — as well. Tell us: How do you envision the First Lady looking on Inauguration day? 


–Kate Hogan


PHOTOS: SEE THE FIRST LADY’S 10 MOST STUNNING GOWNS




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Food service vulnerable to food allergy lawsuits


WASHINGTON (AP) — People with severe food allergies have a new tool in their attempt to find menus that fit their diet: federal disabilities law. And that could leave schools, restaurants and anyplace else that serves food more vulnerable to legal challenges over food sensitivities.


A settlement stemming from a lack of gluten-free foods available to students at a Massachusetts university could serve as a precedent for people with other allergies or conditions, including peanut sensitivities or diabetes. Institutions and businesses subject to the Americans With Disabilities Act could be open to lawsuits if they fail to honor requests for accommodations by people with food allergies.


Colleges and universities are especially vulnerable because they know their students and often require them to eat on campus, Eve Hill of the Justice Department's civil rights division says. But a restaurant also could be liable if it blatantly ignored a customer's request for certain foods and caused that person to become ill, though that case might be harder to argue if the customer had just walked in off the street, Hill says.


The settlement with Lesley University, reached last month but drawing little attention, will require the Cambridge, Mass., institution to serve gluten-free foods and make other accommodations for students who have celiac disease. At least one student complained to the federal government after the school would not exempt the student from a meal plan even though the student couldn't eat the food.


"All colleges should heed this settlement and take steps to make accommodations," says Alice Bast, president and founder of the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. "To our community this is definitely a precedent."


People who suffer from celiac disease don't absorb nutrients well and can get sick from the gluten found in wheat, rye and barley. The illness, which affects around 2 million Americans, causes abdominal pain, bloating and diarrhea, and people who have it can suffer weight loss, fatigue, rashes and other problems. Celiac is a diagnosed illness that is more severe than gluten sensitivity, which some people self-diagnose.


Ten years ago, most people had never heard of celiac disease. But awareness has exploded in recent years, for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Some researchers say it was under-diagnosed, others say it's because people eat more processed wheat products like pastas and baked goods than in past decades, and those items use types of wheat that have a higher gluten content.


Gluten-free diets have expanded beyond those with celiac disease. Millions of people are buying gluten-free foods because they say they make them feel better, even if they don't have a wheat allergy. Americans were expected to spend $7 billion on gluten-free foods last year.


With so many people suddenly concerned with gluten content, colleges and universities have had to make accommodations. Some will allow students to be exempted from meal plans, while others will work with students individually. They may need to do even more now as the federal government is watching.


"These kids don't want to be isolated," Bast says. "Part of the college experience is being social. If you can't even eat in the school cafeteria then you are missing out on a big part of college life."


Under the Justice Department agreement, Lesley University says it will not only provide gluten-free options in its dining hall but also allow students to pre-order, provide a dedicated space for storage and preparation to avoid cross-contamination, train staff about food allergies and pay a $50,000 cash settlement to the affected students.


"We are not saying what the general meal plan has to serve or not," Hill says. "We are saying that when a college has a mandatory meal plan they have to be prepared to make reasonable modifications to that meal plan to accommodate students with disabilities."


The agreement says that food allergies may constitute a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act, if they are severe enough. The definition was made possible under 2009 amendments to the disability law that allowed for episodic impairments that substantially limit activity.


"By preventing people from eating, they are really preventing them from accessing their educational program," Hill says of the school and its students.


Mary Pat Lohse, the chief of staff and senior adviser to Lesley University's president, says the school has been working with the Justice Department for more than three years to address students' complaints. She says the school has already implemented most parts of the settlement and will continue to update policies to serve students who need gluten-free foods.


"The settlement agreement provides a positive road map for other colleges and universities to follow," Lohse says.


Joan Rector McGlockton of the National Restaurant Association says that restaurants have taken notice of an increasing demand for gluten free options, "drawing attention to the importance of providing these options as well as the preparation methods involved in serving these options."


The group has a training program for restaurants so they will know what to do when food allergy issues arise.


Some say the Justice Department decision goes too far. Hans von Spakovsky, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who worked in the civil rights division of the Justice Department under President George W. Bush, says food allergies shouldn't apply under the disability act. He adds that the costs could be substantial when schools are already battling backlash from high tuition costs.


"I certainly encourage colleges and universities to work with students on this issue, but the fact that this is a federal case and the Justice Department is going to be deciding what kind of meals could be served in a dining hall is just absurd," he says.


Whether the government is involved or not, schools and other food service establishments are likely to hear from those who want more gluten-free foods. Dhanu Thiyagarajan, a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, says she decided to speak up when she arrived at school and lost weight because there were too few gluten-free options available. Like Lesley University, the University of Pittsburgh requires that on-campus students participate in a meal plan.


Thiyagarajan eventually moved off campus so she could cook her own food, but not before starting an organization of students who suffer from wheat allergies like hers. She says she is now working with food service at the school and they have made a lot of progress, though not enough for her to move back on campus.


L. Scott Lissner, the disability coordinator at Ohio State University, says he has seen similar situations at his school, though people with food allergies have not traditionally thought of themselves as disabled. He says schools will eventually have to do more than just exempt students from a meal plan.


"This is an early decision on a growing wave of needs that universities are going to have to address," he says of the Lesley University agreement.


___


Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick


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Wall Street little changed; Intel drags, Morgan Stanley up

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks opened little changed on Friday, a day after the S&P 500 rose to its highest level in five years, as a weak outlook from Intel offset a fourth-quarter profit at Morgan Stanley.


Shares of Intel Corp slumped 6.1 percent to $21.30 after the tech company forecast quarterly revenue that was below analysts' estimates and hiked capital spending plans for the year.


That was offset somewhat by a 5-percent gain in shares of Morgan Stanley , which reported a fourth-quarter profit after a year-earlier loss, helped by higher revenue at the bank's institutional securities business. Its stock jumped 5.3 percent to $22.84.


The earnings season so far has been mixed, but that could change with a barrage of releases scheduled for next week, said Doug Cote, chief market strategist, ING Investment Management in New York.


"There were some good reports but the real big bellwether companies are not coming in strong," said Cote.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> edged up 8.02 points, or 0.06 percent, at 13,604.04. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> slipped 1.20 points, or 0.08 percent, to 1,479.74. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 7.52 points, or 0.24 percent, to 3,128.48.


Overall, S&P 500 company earnings are expected to have risen 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, Thomson Reuters data showed. Expectations for the quarter have dropped considerably since October, when a 9.9 percent gain was estimated.


On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose to its highest since late 2007, and that could prompt investors to lock in recent gains, analysts said.


Economic data out of China provided some support to the market, though the focus remained on U.S. corporate earnings. The country's economy grew at a modestly faster-than-expected 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter, the latest sign the world's second-biggest economy was pulling out of a post-global financial crisis slowdown which saw it grow in 2012 at its weakest pace since 1999.


General Electric reported a better-than-expected rise in earnings on Friday, spurred by robust demand in China and oil-producing countries. Shares were up 2.4 percent to $21.82.


Despite the gains in Morgan Stanley, financial stocks sagged as Capital One Financial reported disappointing profit. Capital One slumped 7.4 percent to $57.06, while the KBW bank index <.bkx> slipped 0.4 percent.


Research In Motion climbed 4.7 percent to $15.61 after Jefferies Group boosted the BlackBerry maker's rating and price target.


(Editing by Bernadette Baum)



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Standoff After Militants Seize Americans and Other Hostages in Algeria





BAMAKO, Mali — The Algerian military launched an operation on Thursday against armed Islamist extremists holding dozens of hostages including Americans and other foreigners at a remote gas field on Thursday, and a top Algerian official said at least four hostages were freed. There were unconfirmed reports of multiple casualties.







Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign hostages on Wednesday.






The military operation, confirmed by an Algerian official and the governments of Japan and Britain, which said they had been informed by Algerian authorities, came more than 24 hours after the armed extremists seized the hostages at the internationally managed gas field near the Libyan border in retaliation for the French military intervention in Mali last week.


“There was an assault, yes,” said the Algerian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation. “There are burned-out vehicles. Four hostages have been saved.”


The official said reports that Algerian army helicopters had strafed the gas field and had killed 35 hostages and 15 kidnappers were “exaggerated.” He said that some kidnappers had been killed but he would not say whether any hostages had been killed.


“We are waiting for official confirmation,” he said.


News agencies in Algeria and neighboring Mauritania said the helicopters may have attacked when the kidnappers sought to move their hostages from one part of the installation to another.


British officials in London said Algerian authorities had informed them that an “operation” was under way at the remote location in the desert, but gave no further details. “It remains an ongoing situation,” one official said, speaking in return for anonymity under departmental rules. Japanese authorities were still trying to ascertain if any Japanese hostages had escaped, the top Japanese government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told a news conference.


The situation is “very confused,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Paris and was “evolving hour by hour.” Mr. Hollande confirmed for the first time officially that French citizens were among the captives.


The kidnapping in Algeria was a retaliation for the continuing French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali that has escalated into a much broader conflict spilling beyond Mali and North Africa to the United States and other countries with citizens held hostage. Reuters said the survivors of the Algerian assault included hostages from the United States, Belgium, Japan and Britain. The full extent of the casualties was not immediately clear.


Before reports of an assault began to emerge, many hostages — both Algerian and foreign — were reported to have escaped as the kidnappers sought and failed to persuade Algerian authorities to give them safe passage with their captives.


The Algerian news Web site TSA, quoted a local official, Sidi Knaoui, as saying 10 foreign hostages and 40 Algerians had escaped Thursday after the kidnappers had made several aborted attempts to flee with their captives. Mr. Knaoui said he had been scheduled to meet with the hostage takers in an attempt at negotiations. He could not be reached for confirmation.


The Irish government confirmed that an Irish national had escaped or been released. The man had contacted his family and was "understood to be safe and well and no longer a hostage," Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement.


Other Algerian news reports said that 30 Algerian hostages and 15 foreigners escaped, but there was no immediate independent confirmation of that account. The Associated Press, quoting an unidentified Algerian official, said 20 foreigners, including some Americans, had escaped.


Earlier, a French television station, France 24, quoted an unidentified hostage as saying the attackers “were heavily armed and forced several hostages to wear explosives belts. They threatened to blow up the gas field if Algerian forces attempted to enter the site,” the station reported.


Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako, and Alan Cowell and Scott Sayare from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Clifford Krauss from Houston, Rick Gladstone from New York, Elisabeth Bumiller from Rome, and Steven Erlanger from Paris.



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PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 could cost just $350, expected to launch this fall






Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) are both expected to announce their next-generation gaming consoles at the Electronics Entertainment Expo in June, or even a little before then. While we have seen rumored specs for both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox 720, one thing that has escaped us is a possible price tag. In a research note to investors on Monday, Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research suggested that both consoles could retail for between $ 350 and $ 400 in the U.S., Games Industry International reported. The analyst revealed that during the Consumer Electronics Show last week he spent time “with a number of companies involved in video game development and distribution,” who informed him that the next-generation consoles will be “largely built from ‘off the shelf’ high-end PC components, along with hybrid physical/digital distribution models, enhanced voice controls and motion sensing, and broad multi-media capabilities.”


[More from BGR: HTC One SV review]






Sebastian believes that “a PC-based architecture (Intel chips in the case of Xbox) should have a number of advantages over custom-developed silicon.” In his opinion, there will be less of a “learning curve” for software developers compared to completely new technology, and the cost of production and retail price points should be lower than prior console launches.


[More from BGR: Dell’s bold plan to reinvent itself: A USB-sized PC that gives access to Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS]


Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in 2005 with a top end price of $ 399, while Sony released the PlayStation 3 a year later for $ 499 and $ 599 respectively.


“It will be easier to build online services around PC chip architecture, including flexible business models (free-to-play, subscriptions) and multi-media (over the top) content offerings,” the analyst added. “For Microsoft, this design will also allow for more integration with Windows 8 and Windows Mobile devices.”


Sebastian expects Sony to launch the PlayStation 4 in October and Microsoft to launch the Xbox 720 in November.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News




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Betty White's 91st Birthday Gift: A Boa Constrictor















01/17/2013 at 10:45 AM EST



Betty White received a very special – albeit very slimy – gift for her 91st birthday.

To mark her Thursday milestone, the Lifeline Program – a company dedicated to life-settlement specialists for which she is a spokesperson – adopted a red-tailed boa from the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens in her name.

For White, a longtime supporter and ambassador to the zoo, the snake was a familiar face.

She first met Jacob on the set of "I'm Still Hot," her 2011 viral music video with singer Luciana that benefited the Los Angeles Zoo.

"Jacob the boa constrictor is good as gold and cuddles in my arms," she says in a statement, "and around my neck." (Look out, Pontiac!)

Slimy presents aside, White has a simple wish for her birthday this year. She's asking fans to donate to the Morris Animal Foundation, a nonprofit committed to animal health science. Her goal: to raise $10,000.

"Animals are near and dear to my heart, and I've devoted my life to trying to improve their lives," she writes in a blog for the Huffington Post. "Since a girl like me already has more than I could hope for, I'm asking fellow animal lovers for a special birthday gift this year."

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Large study confirms flu vaccine safe in pregnancy


NEW YORK (AP) — A large study offers reassuring news for pregnant women: It's safe to get a flu shot.


The research found no evidence that the vaccine increases the risk of losing a fetus, and may prevent some deaths. Getting the flu while pregnant makes fetal death more likely, the Norwegian research showed.


The flu vaccine has long been considered safe for pregnant women and their fetus. U.S. health officials began recommending flu shots for them more than five decades ago, following a higher death rate in pregnant women during a flu pandemic in the late 1950s.


But the study is perhaps the largest look at the safety and value of flu vaccination during pregnancy, experts say.


"This is the kind of information we need to provide our patients when discussing that flu vaccine is important for everyone, particularly for pregnant women," said Dr. Geeta Swamy, a researcher who studies vaccines and pregnant women at Duke University Medical Center.


The study was released by the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday as the United States and Europe suffer through an early and intense flu season. A U.S. obstetricians group this week reminded members that it's not too late for their pregnant patients to get vaccinated.


The new study was led by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. It tracked pregnancies in Norway in 2009 and 2010 during an international epidemic of a new swine flu strain.


Before 2009, pregnant women in Norway were not routinely advised to get flu shots. But during the pandemic, vaccinations against the new strain were recommended for those in their second or third trimester.


The study focused on more than 113,000 pregnancies. Of those, 492 ended in the death of the fetus. The researchers calculated that the risk of fetal death was nearly twice as high for women who weren't vaccinated as it was in vaccinated mothers.


U.S. flu vaccination rates for pregnant women grew in the wake of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, from less than 15 percent to about 50 percent. But health officials say those rates need to be higher to protect newborns as well. Infants can't be vaccinated until 6 months, but studies have shown they pick up some protection if their mothers got the annual shot, experts say.


Because some drugs and vaccines can be harmful to a fetus, there is a long-standing concern about giving any medicine to a pregnant woman, experts acknowledged. But this study should ease any worries about the flu shot, said Dr. Denise Jamieson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


"The vaccine is safe," she said.


___


Online:


Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org


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