For women who know they want to have kids, that’s a pretty grim thought, but it turns out to be even worse than that: We lose hundreds or even a thousand eggs per month through a process that’s like programmed cell death, says Owen Davis, MD, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). And even if you’re preventing ovulation with the pill or an IUD, those unreleased eggs don’t stick around — they die.
Month: April 2016
Are We Ready for Prenatal Children?
Let’s assume that Alabama voters pass a referendum approving the constitutional amendment that Rep. Ed Henry, R-Hartselle, perennially offers – the personhood amendment which decrees that life begins at “fertilization” and an embryo or fetus is a person. Supporters of the bill contemplate that “prenatal children” would receive the equal protection of all the same laws that others enjoy. This is an example of many of the bills sponsored by Republican legislators over the past five years. They are at best, ill-conceived, and at worst, absurd.
The Number of Triplets Born in the U.S. Drops by 40%
Women are having fewer triplets than in the past, according to a new federal study looking at the rate of multiple births over time. Experts have been concerned over spikes in women having triplets—thought to be due to women getting pregnant later and the use of fertility enhancement technologies.
These Women are More Likely to Have IVF Success
According to a new study done by startup FertilityIQ, women who have more money are often more successful at in vitro fertilizations — an alternative form of creating an embryo in which a male’s sperm and woman’s egg are joined together outside the body.
Decoy Eggs Used to Provide Birth Control for Mice
Scientists have created a novel method of contraception, using polymer beads coated in a special protein as “decoy” eggs in mice. In experiments described in Science Translational Medicine, researchers deposited the beads in the uteruses of mice. When the mice mated, sperm cells bound themselves to the fake eggs, preventing the real eggs from being fertilized. The scientists from the National Institutes of Health say it’s extremely unlikely the beads would be used in their current form as human contraception, but that they do show promise as a better way to select sperm for use in fertility treatments.
40 Isn’t the New 30 When It Comes to Your Ovaries
Finally, positive attention is being paid to the aging woman. Women in their 40s look better, feel better, have successful careers and seem to be able to do it all. In fact, it has been suggested that life for a woman really begins at age 40. For once, the “mature” woman is being celebrated rather than lamented. 40 is the new 30!
Radiant Zinc Fireworks Reveal Human Egg Quality
A stunning explosion of zinc fireworks occurs when a human egg is activated by a sperm enzyme, and the size of these “sparks” is a direct measure of the quality of the egg and its ability to develop into an embryo, according to new research from Northwestern Medicine.
When You ‘Come Out’ About Infertility
Last year, seven months after the birth of the daughter we fought for, cried for, prayed for, I decided to open up and share my story. For years, we had hidden our infertility struggle, only letting my parents and sister, my best friend and a few of our closest friends know the journey we were on. I wrote a CNN iReport in honor of Infertility Awareness Week, hoping to inspire others and let other women know that they weren’t alone. I “came out.”
Dead Man’s Sperm
The patient is dead. He has, in fact, been so for a while—over 30 hours, according to his chart—but some of him survives. What the doctor has extracted is a liquid that can create life. An incredible substance that is neither person nor property; simultaneously so abundant yet valuable that we still haven’t quite figured out how to treat it. It is the dead man’s sperm.
Inside the Hidden Global Supply Chain for Frozen Sperm, Eggs, and Embryos
In a world with porous borders and wildly divergent surrogacy laws, making a baby can be a global affair: The eggs might come from a woman in South Africa, the sperm from a man in Canada, and the surrogate herself might be in Cambodia. What connects them, literally, is a cold chain.