Month: October 2015

Why We Love Pregnancy (and you should too)

Last modified: December 4, 2021
Why We Love Pregnancy

Giving birth to a baby is without doubt the most intense, life changing experience for a woman.

The birth of a baby is a life event that can’t be compared to any other experience in terms of significance and importance. The responsibility of nurturing and watching children grow and develop changes the appreciation of life and health, with a resulting long term impact upon individuals, families and ultimately, society.
Giving birth to a baby is without doubt the most intense, life changing experience for a woman. However, believe it or not, a baby isn’t the only good thing that women get out of pregnancy. The extra hormones necessary for the embryo development can also have a positive impact on your well-being and general health condition during and after pregnancy. Studies show that most women have a positive pregnancy experience reporting just a few negative symptoms that had to deal with while pregnant.
During their pregnancy women can experience some wonderful changes taking place in their body that they will definitely love, such as:
Improvements to skin and complexion. Women love the fact their hair look thicker and their skin nice and radiant. That happens because during pregnancy the rate at which hair falls out slows right down. As for the skin, since extra moisture is retained under the skin, women’s complexions look shiny and less wrinkled.
Enhanced senses. High levels of estrogen increase the sense of smell in pregnant women and that seems to enhance their perception of taste, meaning you can probably enjoy the taste of your food more than usually.
Diminished menstrual pain. Once the menstrual cycle resumes, after childbirth, it is very likely that the overall period pain that women usually experience, as well as the annoying cramps will be diminished. This pain reduction is a well-known phenomenon even though the reason this happens is not quite known yet.
In addition to positive body changes we could not but mention these little pleasures that women expecting a baby love to enjoy without guilt like eating more, having a nap after lunch, taking time off work and of course allowing themselves to be spoiled by their loved ones.

Thinking of getting pregnant soon?

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Egg Donation On The Rise

Last modified: December 4, 2021
Egg Donation On The Rise

Among women over 45, more now use Egg Donation than their own eggs when using medical assistance to get pregnant.

Egg donation is the process by which a fertile woman donates her eggs to an infertile woman for purposes of assisted reproduction. According to recent statistical studies, egg donation for IVF appears to be on the rise as the number of women using egg donors to get pregnant is constantly increasing. — and with good results.

This is probably not a surprise since that’s something that most people are likely to consider if becomes clear to them that egg donation is going to be the only way in which family creation via assisted conception can be possible. This frequently applies to women of older age whose fertility has started to decrease. Among women over 45, more now use donated eggs than their own when using medical assistance to get pregnant.

Recent statistics surrounding the egg donation industry show a rise of donor egg pregnancies, although the ideal outcome — a single baby born on time at a healthy weight — is still uncommon. A US study reported a 69 percent increase in fresh and frozen IVF cycles from 2000-2010 and that attempts using donor eggs increased over the decade from 10,801 to 18,306.

In 2010, about a quarter of the women who used donor eggs had good birth outcomes (a singleton born after at least 37 weeks) compared to 19 percent in 2000. This is probably related to the number of embryos transferred to the intended mother’s womb. According to the study, single embryos were used in 15 percent of IVF cycles in 2010. In 2000, that number was less than one percent.

The number of egg donors is also increased over the past years and according to Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) women registering as altruistic donors have risen every year since 2006. The HFEA study which surveyed 1423 egg donors at 60 IVF clinics in 11 European countries, reported that the majority of donors are keen to help infertile couples for altruistic reasons, but a large proportion also expect a financial benefit.

What could possibly motivate you for becoming an egg donor, money or altruistic reasons?

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More Sex May Boost Fertility

Last modified: December 4, 2021

Sex at any time induces immunity changes that may boost fertility, enhancing chances of conception. That is what an American study, currently published to ‘’Fertility and Sterility’’ and ‘’Physiology and Behavior’’, reported.

Sex May Boost Fertility

American scientists proved that sexual activity can affect Fertility

Researchers from the University of Indiana, collected data from thirty women in order to investigate how the immune system of women who were sexually active is regulated compared to those who were not. The study was led by Dr. Lorenz, a researcher at the Kinsey Institute of Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. They found clear differences regarding the immune system regulation between the two study groups.

‘’It is already known that frequent sexual intercourse is recommended to couples who want to achieve pregnancy, even if it’s outside of a woman’s ovulation cycle. However, for the first time we can actually scientifically document that intercourse promotes immunity types in the body that can boost fertility and support conception. In fact, even for non-fertile days the body, during sex, prepares itself in advance for a potential pregnancy’’, Dr. Lorenz explained.

In the paper published in ‘’Fertility and Sterility’’ the scientific team used saliva samples from thirty healthy premenopausal women at the four phases of the women’s cycle (menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, and luteal). Half of them were sexually active while the other half was abstaining from sex.

They discovered that women who were sexually active exhibited greater changes to helper T cells and proteins related to the body’s ability to get ready for possible pregnancy changes. Moreover, the same group was found to have higher levels of helper T cells in overall, which are believed to assist the body to adjust to pregnancy during the luteal phase of the cycle.

This study was repeated under the same conditions, using data from other 32 premenopausal women. The outcome confirmed the results from the first study, as published in ‘’Physiology and Behavior’’.

It has been previously shown that immunity changes occur during pregnancy, after labor and during menstrual cycle. But now for the first time the American scientists proved that sexual activity can actually affect the function of the immune system. In other words more sex may boost fertility!!!

 What do think? Is this a good reason for having more sex?

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Unexplained Infertility: Treatment for Fewer Side Effects

Last modified: December 4, 2021

Infertility is a significant global problem affecting 1:7 worldwide. An estimated 24% of couples had no detected conception within 12 and 24 months of unprotected intercourse on a nation-wide representative sample of couples from the general population. Unexplained infertility is one of the most frequent infertility diagnoses given to women, encompassing up to approximately 30% of all cases.

Medications

Women with unexplained infertility are commonly treated with drugs for ovarian stimulation.

Unexplained infertility refers to couples who fail to conceive, even though the female ovulates normally, has no obvious abnormalities in the reproductive tract, and the male is producing an adequate number of motile sperm. Nowadays, there are plenty of infertility treatments available, however many assisted reproduction techniques like IVF are very expensive and not often covered by insurance; therefore IVF is an option less commonly offered.

Women with unexplained infertility are commonly treated with drugs for ovarian stimulation. During this procedure the ovaries release an egg and sperm is directly inserted into the uterus. This is a quite successful treatment and definitely less costly. Letrozole, gonadotropins and clomiphene citrate are the drugs most commonly used for ovarian stimulation.
Unfortunately, medication for ovarian stimulation has its side effects and can be complicated by ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which results in multiple pregnancies with increased risk of preterm birth. The challenge is to determine which medication is best at achieving and maintaining pregnancy while reducing multiple pregnancies.

In a recent study, scientists assessed the frequency of multiple pregnancies among women with clinical pregnancies. Women age 18 to 40 who were ovulating and had at least one Fallopian tube were treated with letrozole, gonadotropins or clomiphene for up to four cycles, comparing the outcome for the three drugs. According to the study, ovarian stimulation with letrozole resulted in significantly lower frequency of multiple pregnancies, but also a lower frequency of live births, as compared with gonadotropins, but not as compared with clomiphene. Therefore, scientists concluded that clomiphene citrate is the most appropriate means to stimulate ovulation in unexplained infertility treated with intrauterine insemination (IUI).

Would clomiphene, as the least invasive treatment, be your first option among other alternatives for unexplained infertility treatment?

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IVF Is Not Always Your Best Option

Last modified: December 4, 2021
IVF Is Not Always Your Best Option

IVF is not always the best option for infertility treatment and it is highly recommended for patients to go through a thorough investigation in order to have a clear idea about why they need IVF.

Professor Robert Winston, one of the founding fathers of IVF, has recently published his new book, The Essential Fertility Guide, in which he outlines

fertility treatment options suggesting that IVF is not always your best option for infertility treatment.

For many people, there is no other experience that matches the birth of a baby. One in every seven couples in the UK struggle with infertility. There are various reasons for this and a number of treatments available for optimizing their chances of having a baby.

However, there is also a lot of misinformation out there about infertility treatment, so experts say people should be careful about which advice they heed.  Especially in the private sector where expensive IVF, which only has a 25 percent success rate, is a highly profitable industry.  The fact that a large number of patients address to private clinics for solving their infertility problems could perhaps explain why many people assume the best option for overcoming infertility is IVF (in vitro fertilisation), which according to Professor Winston is often not the case.

When patients meet with their doctor they are often surprised to learn that IVF may not be their first treatment option for infertility. In reality, IVF technique is used far too often before other, usually cheaper and less stressful options, are fully explored. For that reason, it is highly recommended for patients to go through a thorough investigation in order to find out the exact cause of their infertility and have a clear idea about why they need IVF. Prof. Winston adds that most of the infertile couples do not require such a complex treatment and often expectant treatment, ie. waiting to get pregnant, is likely to be more effective than IVF.

It is advisable for infertile patients to start with low tech treatments. Starting with the simplest, most affordable treatment options first and move up to more advanced treatments as medically indicated, is the best way to deal with it.”There are numerous causes of infertility,” says Prof. Winston, “and the best treatment may be different in each circumstance.

Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is an example of a low tech treatment frequently requiring less medication and fewer monitoring appointments with a lower cost. Depending on the cause, other alternatives to IVF could be drug treatments to encourage ovulation, laparoscopic (minimally invasive) surgery or treatment for endometriosis.

Have you asked the right questions to your doctor?

Make sure you are properly tested to identify the cause of infertility and choose the best treatment option for you.

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Gattaca film. Three parents one baby

Last modified: December 4, 2021
Three parents baby

UK is the first country where mitochondrial donation IVF can now be tested

Many scientists from all over the world believe mitochondrial donation IVF, also

referred to as “three-parents” in vitro fertilization (IVF), has the potential to prevent the disease’s transmission.

Every year over 4,000 children in the US  are born with a mitochondrial disease like muscular dystrophy, Leigh’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. In the UK this affects around 3,500 people; at least 1 in 200 children are affected by mitochondrial DNA disease, and while many will be asymptomatic or have mild, late-onset or undiagnosed problems, around 1 in 6500 children are diagnosed to more serious mitochondrial disorders. It now appears that a novel IVF technique can possibly decrease the number of people with such a disease in the future.

Mitochondrial diseases are caused by harmful mutations in mitochondria – energy-generating organelles in the cells.

These mutations stop the mitochondria from converting the energy of food and oxygen into ATP that powers the cells’ functions. This mitochondria dysfunction can impact the heart, brain, muscles, lungs and other parts of the body. Inherited mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are an important cause of genetic diseases for which there is currently no cure. For that reason the development of a preventing strategy is vital.

Three parents – Mitochondrial donation is a new technique based on IVF that involves replacing the dysfunctional mitochondria in a mother’s egg with healthy mitochondria from the egg of a female donor.

However this method has not been tested in humans yet and for this to become possible new regulations are needed to allow the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to permit the application of these techniques. Earlier this year, Parliament agreed to new regulations by voting in favor of a change in the legislation governing UK genetic research. That makes the UK the first country where mitochondrial donation IVF can now be tested in the clinic. Muscular Dystrophy UK funded the early development of this technique, and campaigned for many years for this change in the law.

Despite the overwhelming support for the three parents method as the only way to prevent such a disease, there are still some people opposing to the legalization of mitochondrial donation arguing that this could eventually lead to deliberate modification of the babies’ physical traits in the future, paving the way for ‘’designer babies’’.

So what about the ethical aspects of a method that mixes DNA from 3 different people to create a baby?

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Breast Cancer and Fertility Options

Last modified: December 4, 2021

Breast cancer is not common in young women. Less than 5% of all breast cancers diagnosed in the U.S. occur in women under 40. However breast cancer

Breast cancer

The main concern for young women being treated for breast cancer is their fertility options.

in younger women is usually more aggressive and is more likely for them to require chemotherapy. A breast cancer diagnosis can be very shocking for young women since usually at that time in life creating a family is a top priority, so it is really important to them to have fertility options.

The main concern for young women being treated for breast cancer is loss of fertility. Even though breast cancer itself does not impact fertility since it does not damage the ovaries and general reproductive health what impairs or threatens to impair fertility is the treatment of it. More specifically, the two major ways of treating breast cancer that can cause infertility are the chemotherapy and the endocrine therapy.

Standard cytotoxic chemotherapy for breast cancer can damage the ovaries and most of the regimens used for breast cancer seem to cause ovarian toxicity to some level. The level of fertility damage depends on the amount of therapy given and the specific regimen, as well as the age of the woman at diagnosis.

The other major factor is the time it takes to receive appropriate endocrine therapy. Hormonal therapies (tamoxifen, ovarian suppression) are usually given for a period of 5 to 10 years. During that time it’s not that the woman’s reproductive system is damaged by the drugs but it is modified or suppressed in the short term, not permanently. The problem with that is while women are on these drugs their ovaries still aging in time as they naturally do in women growing older.

Breast Cancer and Fertility Options

Two are the main ways to preserve the fertility and increase the chance of having children later:

  1. Cryopreservation, the process of freezing and storing embryos or oocytes for later use. After ovarian stimulation fertility specialists will get oocytes and get them fertilized in a test tube—classic IVF. The embryos can be implanted in the womb after full treatment recovery. The other option is to freeze the oocytes for later use, a method that has now proved out quite successful.
  2. Ovary suppression, a method that spares the reproductive system. This approach uses drugs called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogs that can suppress the ovarian function through treatment and temporarily shut down the body’s production of eggs. This process seems to protect the cells that develop into eggs from damage during breast cancer treatment.

Those are the main options and there are more experimental things on the way, including taking a piece of the ovary and freezing that. There is a lot of research going into that so it is likely that more fertility options will come up in the future for women treated for breast cancer.

Would you discuss your options with a fertility specialist before making treatment decisions?

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Human sperm in vitro created by scientists

Last modified: December 4, 2021

Human sperm cells have been successfully created in the laboratory for the first time by using an artificial bioreactor. This is a breakthrough in infertility treatment sought for more than a decade since no one had been able to complete the complicated process of sperm maturation in vitro.

human sperm by scientists

Human sperm cells have been successfully created in the laboratory

Researchers based at a French national research institute in Lyon had announced this discovery previously, but they and government lab CNRS explained the process for the first time on Sept. 17 after taking out a patent on it.

Scientists have managed to complete spermatogenesis in vitro, a process taking place in the male testes in vivo, which leads the immature germ cells to become mature spermatozoa fully competent to fertilize. They succeeded this by developing a bioreactor using a viscous fluid, made partly of substances found in the walls of mushrooms, to mimic the in vivo conditions.

Scientists claim that this achievement promises to succeed in helping young men with cancer that caused them fertility issues later in their lives and adult men who cannot make their own sperm. About 15,000 men are made sterile due to cancer treatments and other 120,000 suffer from untreatable infertility. They explained that their fertility could be preserved by developing mature human sperm from their immature cells, then freezing it. The team hopes to be able to treat patients as soon as 4 years.

Even though trials have been reportedly successful on rat, monkey and human sperm cells, the lack of further details on the process has other scientists feeling skeptical. They look forward to the publication of the study so that to be able to discuss details of the research with the team and reveal the full mechanism through which such a process was accomplished in vitro.

Is this novel data or what?

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