This story updated Monday, April 2, to correct the foundation’s web address.

BARSTOW • making their way down Main Street on a breezy Saturday morning, a group of locals held signs and marched for a cause most had never heard of: Hyperemesis Gravidarum.

The Ayden Rae Foundation, made up of Barstow and former Barstow locals, walked the long stretch of Main Street to bring awareness to HG, which causes severe vomiting during pregnancy, causing dehydration and malnutrition, and in severe cases can lead to death of the mother or the unborn baby.

Barstow Mayor Joe Gomez participated in the walk, saying “I just wanted to help them with their cause.” Gomez also issued a proclamation on behalf of the city, recognizing March 31 as Hyperemesis Gravidarum Awareness Day.

For Vanessa Pack, Ayden Rae Foundation’s founder, HG caused her to lose nine of her 11 pregnancies. with each pregnancy she suffered severe weight loss, constant vomiting, fainting and dehydration to the point where she couldn’t swallow her saliva. she was prescribed many medication, IV treatments, and even a feeding tube to keep her nourished, though she was denied some prescriptions by her insurance carrier.

“Many people don’t realize the hell we go through to have a child,” Pack said.

According to medterms.com, HG affects one in 300 women and is usually associated with women who lose more than 5 percent of their pre-pregnancy weight.

Pack said since the foundation has been active in raising awareness, there have been many women, five in Barstow so far, who have sought help as they struggle with HG.

She said one of the greatest difficulties HG affected women face is when family, friends, and even medical professionals don’t take their illness seriously.

“most people who are in the medical profession, they see it as the women are making it up and the signs and symptoms are not real,” Pack said.

She said though there are treatments that can help the ease the symptoms of HG, insurance companies will sometimes not approve treatments.

This was the case with Pack’s seventh pregnancy with Ayden Rae, a baby girl who only lived to 23 weeks. During the weeks of that pregnancy, Pack said she was denied treatment after treatment from her insurance company. After grappling with extreme dehydration, constant vomiting, weakness, hunger, infections and denied IV treatment, she noticed at 23 weeks her baby wasn’t moving anymore.

“you hear it over and over again, ‘when you get pregnant, morning sickness is normal,’” Pack said. “there was a point I was thinking this was normal. But when you have HG, you can’t eat, can’t drink, you can’t even stop vomiting. when you have blood flying out of your throat, at a certain point you realize this is not normal.”

Pack has told her story on the medical show, “The Doctors,” and to anyone who will listen. she believes if more people were aware of HG, perhaps they would be more supportive of women who struggle with it.

To raise awareness and funds for HG research, the Ayden Rae Foundation has planned several events, including the motorcycle “Ride for Ayden” April 14, and the Route 66 run and Relay Sept.1-16.

To find out more information or to get involved visit aydenraefoundation.org.

Contact the writer:(760) 256-4123 or

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who take cholesterol-lowering statins for at least one to two years appear to be less likely to develop gallstones, a study of nearly two million Danish residents shows.

Among those receiving at least five prescriptions for the drugs, the risk of developing gallstones fell by 11 to 24 percent — and the more prescriptions, the larger the decrease.

People who had just started taking statins, meanwhile, had a higher risk of developing gallstones, which form when bile stored in the gallbladder hardens into pieces of stone-like material.

That makes sense, study author Dr. Rune Erichsen of Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark told Reuters Health. People are prescribed statins to lower their cholesterol, which is one of the ingredients in gallstones. What's more, high cholesterol is tied to obesity, poor diet, and other factors that can increase the risk of gallstones.

"This is the reason that we find an increased gallstone disease risk in patients (who) just started taking statins," Erichsen said. But after a while on statins, those risks appeared to diminish, which squares with earlier research.

Some gallstones are tiny, while others can be as large as a golf ball. often they cause no symptoms, but if they become lodged in the wrong place — blocking the outlet from the gallbladder or pancreas, for instance — they can cause inflammation and severe pain. Depending on the country, between six and 50 percent of adults in the Western world eventually develop some form of gallstone disease.

Statins, too, are common in the Western world. they are prescribed more than any other class of medications in the U.S. and used by about one in five adults. their cost ranges widely, from $11 to more than $200 per month, and they have been shown to increase the rates of liver dysfunction, kidney failure, muscle weakness and cataracts in some populations.

To investigate further how statins impact gallstones, Erichsen and colleagues reviewed nationwide data collected from 1.7 million people living in Northern Denmark. Nearly 33,000 people developed gallstones between 1996 and 2008.

Reporting in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the authors found that more five percent of people who developed gallstones also took statins — slightly more than among those without gallstones.

But after accounting for diseases tied to gallstones, such as liver and heart problems, people with at least five statin prescriptions had lower rates of gallstones than people who didn't take the drug.

Those with 20 or more prescriptions, for instance, had a 24-percent decrease in their chances of developing gallstones compared with non-users.

In an e-mail, Erichsen noted that the study cannot prove that statins directly caused the decrease.

"However, in the specific issue of statins and gallstone disease, there is compelling evidence that long-term statin use reduces the risk of gallstone disease," the researcher concluded. "Statins reduce the synthesis of cholesterol, so less cholesterol is excreted in the liver, and the risk of gallstone disease eventually seems to decrease."

SOURCE: link.reuters.com/tuc47q American Journal of Epidemiology, published November 17, 2010.