Month: December 2012

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Fertility Clinics’ Ad Regulation Falls Short, Report Says

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Smiling babies. Confusing statistics. Talk of miracles. There is too little oversight of how fertility clinics market themselves online, a new report charges, possibly misleading women about their chances of getting pregnant.

In the 30-plus page paper — among the first to examine how fertility clinics market themselves on the web — Jim Hawkins, an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston, looked at all 372 fertility clinics in the United States, that are registered with the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology and that have websites. SART, an affiliate of the non-profit American Society for Reproductive Medicine, represents more than 85 percent of the fertility clinics in the U.S.

According to the report, nearly 80 percent of the clinics’ websites had photos of babies on their homepage. Thirty percent used the word “dream” and nearly 9 percent used the word “miracle,” which, Hawkins argues, may push patients to disregard the high costs of fertility treatment (the average cost of a single cycle of in vitro fertilization is $12,400) and create false hope.

“I don’t think this creates some sort of deception,” Hawkins told HuffPost — at least not a deception that would be illegal under current laws, he said, but showing photos of babies and using such words may suggest to some patients that success is a likely outcome. Read full article.

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Children born after infertility treatment are more likely to suffer from asthma

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Asthma is more common among children born after infertility treatment than among children who have been planned and conceived naturally, according to findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study published online today (Thursday) in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction [1].

The study found that at the age of five, children born to sub-fertile parents – those who had either had to wait longer than a year before managing to conceive or who conceived via some form of assisted reproduction technology (ART) – were significantly more likely to experience asthma, wheezing and to be taking anti-asthmatic medication. The association was driven mainly by children born after in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI); these children were two to four times more likely to have asthma, wheezing or be taking anti-asthmatics.

However, the researchers, based at the universities of Oxford and Essex (UK), say that their findings should not worry parents of ART children. Dr Claire Carson, a researcher at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford (UK), said: “Although the children born after ART were more likely to be diagnosed and treated for asthma than other children, it is important to remember that in absolute terms the difference is quite small. Fifteen percent of the children in our study had asthma at the age of five. Although this figure was higher, 24%, in the IVF children, it isn’t much higher than the one in five risk for all children in the UK.”

She added: “Although we found an association, we cannot tell at this time if it is causal. Further research is needed to establish what might be causing the association and the underlying mechanism involved. It is also important to remember that for most children, asthma is a manageable condition and shouldn’t prevent children from living a full and active life.” Read full article.

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French men not producing as much sperm

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(Reuters Health) – When it comes to sperm counts, French men aren’t what they used to be, according to a new study.

Researchers found that between 1989 and 2005, the number of sperm in one milliliter of the average 35-year-old Frenchman’s semen fell from about 74 million to about 50 million – a decrease of roughly 32 percent.

“That’s certainly within the normal range, but if you think about it, if there continues to be a decrease, we would expect that we’ll get into that infertile range,” said Grace Centola, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology in Birmingham, Alabama.

And the French aren’t the only ones who should be concerned, the researchers said.

“A decline in male reproduction endpoints has been suspected for several decades and is still debated all around the world. Geographical differences have been observed between countries, and between areas inside countries,” said Joëlle Le Moal from the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in France, who led the study.

Writing in the journal Human Reproduction, Le Moal’s team said global analyses have found decreases in sperm counts, as did recent studies in Israel, India, New Zealand and Tunisia.

Centola, who wasn’t involved with the new research, told Reuters Health she had also found similar results in a group of young sperm donors from Boston in the United States. Read full article.

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Federal District Court Judge Rules New York Archdiocese Challenge To Birth Control Benefit May Proceed

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A federal district court in New York denied the Obama administration’s request to dismiss a challenge to the contraception mandate filed by a group of Catholic organizations.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and two other Catholic entities challenged the law, arguing that providing their employees with a health insurance plan that makes contraception available without a co-pay violates their rights to free exercise of religion. The Obama administration argued the plaintiffs couldn’t challenge the insurance requirement at this time since the mandate, which doesn’t take effect until January 2014, isn’t causing the archdiocese any imminent injury. Furthermore, the administration argued, an additional compromise  and the administration to address concerns of religious organizations is in the works. Read full article.

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Australia: successful pregnancy after ‘groundbreaking’ ovarian tissue transplant

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A former cancer patient has become the first woman in Australia to become pregnant following the pioneering procedure of ovarian tissue transplantation.

The 43-year-old woman had ovarian tissue removed and frozen before having treatment for breast cancer in 2005. The tissue was implanted back into the woman by doctors at Monash IVF, allowing her to naturally ovulate and conceive.

‘She’s over the moon, but still very shocked that it has actually happened. I think it’s a bit surreal’, Dr Lynn Burmeister, clinical director at Monash IVF, told the Herald Sun. ‘She thought she’d die from breast cancer at age 37, she met a guy at 43 and now we’ve used her 37-year-old eggs to get her pregnant’.

Worldwide, this was the twentieth reported pregnancy using the procedure. Talking to The Australian, Professor Gab Kovacs who performed the procedure stated: ‘This could be the way to go for women who want to preserve their fertility after cancer’. However he conceded more research on the technique was needed: ‘Right now we don’t know what the success rate for the procedure is but it has great potential’.

The procedure is less invasive than current therapies, requiring only keyhole surgery as opposed to a large abdominal incision, and also does not involve the use of hormones. In addition, the cost of ovarian tissue transplantation is less than some other fertility treatments available. Read full article.

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Nano-fabric defends against HIV and sperm

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U. WASHINGTON (US) — Scientists have developed an electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers that can simultaneously prevent HIV and offer contraception.

As reported in PLOS ONE, the cloth can dissolve to release drugs, providing a platform for cheap, discrete, and reversible protection.

“Our dream is to create a product women can use to protect themselves from HIV infection and unintended pregnancy,” says corresponding author Kim Woodrow, assistant professor of bioengineering. “We have the drugs to do that. It’s really about delivering them in a way that makes them more potent, and allows a woman to want to use it.”

Electrospinning uses an electric field to catapult a charged fluid jet through air to create very fine, nanometer-scale fibers. The fibers can be manipulated to control the material’s solubility, strength, and even geometry. Because of this versatility, fibers may be better at delivering medicine than existing technologies such as gels, tablets, or pills. Read full article.

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Predicting the age at menopause of women having suffered from childhood cancers

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This study provided important data about the fertility window of women who had suffered from childhood cancer and information concerning the associated risk factors, but did not confirm the greater risk of premature menopause (before the age of 40) that was reported by the American studies.

The results were published in the review Human Reproduction of November 15.

Women who have suffered from childhood cancer are known to run a greater risk of premature menopause. However, data about the associated risk factors is limited. Researchers from unit 1018 “Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health (CESP)” (Inserm/Université Paris-Sud/Institut Gustave Roussy) and from the AP-HP analyzed the data from a French cohort, named Euro2k, concerning 1522 survivors of childhood cancer diagnosed between 1945 and 1986 when they were under 18, initially in order to study the mortality rate. The study estimated the radiation doses received at the ovaries by the women in this cohort who had been treated by radiotherapy. 706 of these women filled in a detailed questionnaire about their state of health. 32% of these women had already reached the age of 40 years; 7% were over 50 years of age. The research team studied the age at menopause of these women and the potentially associated risk factors. The researchers based this study on self-reported questionnaires sent to the women in order to obtain information about the menopause, without confirming by measuring FSH levels.

Analysis of this data showed that 97 women (13,7%) were menopaused at a median age of 44 years, in other words, 7 years earlier than the general population. For a third of these women (36%), menopause was surgically induced. Read full article.

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Most Americans support contraception insurance for all

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A new survey finds most Americans back a federal mandate that businesses and faith-based non-profits offer employees insurance coverage for contraception, even if it conflicts with their beliefs.

Most Americans support the Obama administration health reform mandate that requires business owners and faith-based non-profits to offer insurance coverage of contraception for employees, even when doing so conflicts with their religious principles, according to a recent survey by LifeWay Research.

Dozens of groups and business owners are fighting the mandate in court, claiming that the Health and Human Services’ Affordable Care Act requirement violates constitutional rights to religious freedom and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Read full article.

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Teenagers and the Morning-After Pill

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When a teenager goes in for a checkup, the pediatrician often asks the parent to step outside so the doctor can talk to the youngster one-on-one about sensitive topics, like whether she is using drugs or is sexually active.

Now the nation’s leading pediatrics organization is encouraging doctors to also talk to teenagers about the morning-after pill — and to send girls home with prescriptions for emergency contraception, just in case.

The recommendation, announced last week by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is the latest salvo in the contentious debate over access to emergency contraception. Ever since the Food and Drug Administration approved levonorgestrel (now sold under the brand name Plan B One Step, and generically as Next Choice), advocates have pushed to make it more easily accessible.

Several medical societies, including those representing gynecologists and pediatricians, favor making emergency contraceptives available over the counter, since the drugs are supposed to be taken within five days of unprotected sex in order to be effective. In 2006, levonorgestrel was made available over-the-counter for women age 18 and older. In 2009, after a legal fight, the age was lowered to 17. Read full article.