Maggio 2016 - Pregnancy & IVF Clinics Worldwide

Can parasitic worms increase female fertility? Accordingly to what parasitic worm is a woman’s digestive system infected with, she can conceive a child more or less easily. That is the unexpected conclusion of a quite unusual research study who studied a Bolivian tribe of the Amazon called Tsimane.

The Tsimane women have been ranked among the most fertile women in the world.

The idea of conducting this piece of research came from a team member who had begun trying to conceive while working in Bolivia. The fact she conceived rather quickly got her wondering whether there was an environmental factor that made her more fertile and as it turned out…it was a worm!

The biologist who led the study, Aaron Blackwell of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team had been gathering data from about a thousand Tsimane women for nine years. The study results were published in ‘’Science’’.

The Tsimane women have been ranked among the most fertile women in the world, having 10 children each on average, but it appears that some of them are even more fertile compared to others of their tribe.

Study researchers presented evidence that women infected with a specific kind of parasitic worm, a type of hookworm, tend to conceive their first child later in life, have long gaps between their children and have less children in overall. On the contrary, women infected with another type of helminth have birth of their first baby earlier and tend to have more children.

Scientist concluded that the one type of helminth increases female fertility while the other hinders it. The cause of this fertility effect is unknown; however, Blackwell’s theory is that this fertility effect’’ could be related to the balance immune responses that the different parasites induce’’.

70% of the (roughly 16.000 people) has been infected by parasitic worms without taking notice. Women infected with the roundworm (which could grow up to 36 cm) have 3 children more than those not infected. On the other hand, women with the hookworm have 3 children less.

It is estimated that approximately 800 million people have been infected by either hookworm or roundworm globally. Consequently, it is possible that such parasitic infections may play a role to global demography if they indeed have such a major effect on female fertility.

Did this study make you reconsider your opinion about worms?

Hey! If you found this post interesting or useful, you can help us get even better by subscribing to our newsletter. Just write your email and you’ll have the latest news regarding fertility issues. Thank you once more for your help.

Women’s faces turn red during ovulation, study says. It appears that women’s face is redder in the middle of their cycle, during their fertile window.

Women appear more attractive to men when they ovulate

The study, published in ‘’PLoS ONE’’, is considered one of the most efficient in investigating the female face during a menstrual cycle. 22 college girls participated in the study conducted by researchers of Cambridge University in the UK. They photographed the faces of the girls without make-up, every evening, at the same time, when they all gathered for dinner, at the college hall, for a month. For photographing the faces, they used a special instrument, similar to a normal camera but advanced in terms of color capturing.

For analyzing the images captured by the camera, experts designed specialized computer software that picks up an identical patch of cheek from each image. The girls of the study were also tested for hormone changes at specific times, critical for the ovulation cycle, as decided by the research team.

The face color analysis revealed that the skin’s redness exhibited changes during the month. In fact, the biggest change in terms of red skin color was observed during ovulation and retained its intensity over the last days of the cycle, where estrogen levels started to decrease.

The researchers from the University of Cambridge consider that redness changes of the skin were indicative of body temperature fluctuations. However, the face color changes, even at their pick, were not detectable to the human eye. More specifically, the average difference in redness was 0.6 units while the threshold of human visual perception was 2.2 units.

This observation was in contrast to the scientists’ initial expectations, as in other primates it is quite common for females to display specific sighs of ovulation and fertility that are easily detectable to males, attracting them to mate.

In women however, even if their face turns red during ovulation, that is not the case. Previous research has shown that women appear more attractive to men when they ovulate, however facial redness is not what men notice. ‘’Women do not advertise ovulation but they do leak information about it and facial redness could be a small piece of a larger puzzle’’, commented Dr Hannah Rowland from the Zoology Department who led the study.

Mese: Maggio 2016

Parasitic worms increase female fertility?

Did this study make you reconsider your opinion about worms?

Women’s faces turn red during ovulation