Amid the furor raised by reports that American scientists are raising chimeras, or half-human, half-animal embryos, another country gave approval on Friday for researchers to grow human embryos. The reason why the Dutch government allowed scientists to grow human embryos is that the country’s limited supply of leftover embryos from in vitro patients is fast depleting. However, the government said the human embryos could only be used for study in a limited number of fields, reports Reuters.
Category: Fertility Clock Headlines
Women With Severe Symptoms of Depression May Have Difficulty Getting Pregnant; It’s Not The Antidepressants
Clinical depression blankets every aspect of a person’s life, from social engagements to meals to work. The illness even reduces a woman’s chance of having a baby, according to a new study by researchers from the Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine.
Genome Editor CRISPR Helps Trace Growth of Embryos—and Maybe Cancer Next
Alexander Schier simply wanted to make sure he destroyed a gene in zebrafish embryos. So like many biologists these days, he turned to the genome-editing system known as CRISPR. But Schier, a developmental biologist at Harvard University, ended up doing much more than knocking out a gene. He and colleagues devised a new way to mark and trace cells in a developing animal. In its first test, described online today in Science, the researchers used CRISPR-induced mutations to reveal a surprise: Many tissues and organs in adult zebrafish form from just a few embryonic cells.
A Critical Inheritance From Dad Ensures Healthy Embryos
An important feature for life is what embryos receive from mom and dad upon fertilization. Oddly enough, centrioles, the structures responsible for cell division and flagella movement, are given by the paternal gamete. How oocytes, the maternal gametes, lose centrioles and the importance of doing so for female fertility has been an enigma since the 1930s. A team led by Mónica Bettencourt-Dias at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC; Portugal) have cracked this mystery, shedding light upon a critical mechanism whose deregulation leads to infertility, and that is important for the working of other cell types.
How Zika Is Making Couples Question Their Pregnancy Timelines
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently monitoring nearly 300 pregnant women in the United States and its territories who have tested positive for Zika. To date, there has not been a single case of the virus that has been contracted in this country (that is not true of Puerto Rico), but many experts believe it’s only a matter of time before there are pockets of the disease that originate here. All of which means that many women and their partners have begun to grapple with the possibility of Zika, and whether it means they should change their plans for pregnancy in any way.
What’s Getting A Contraceptive Implant Like? I Got One & Here’s What Happened
Don’t want a baby and won’t for a while? We’re in a lucky position these days: women have a variety of choices for contraceptives that last beyond day-to-day use, from the ever-popular IUD to the contraceptive implant. The second option, which is marketed under the name Nexplanon or Implanon, was my chosen contraceptive choice when I decided early in 2016 to look for a more long-lasting baby-preventing alternative to the Pill. (I forget to take it. I’ve thrown it up and had pregnancy scares. It’s a pain in the neck.) So what’s the procedure actually like, and is it fundamentally bizarre to have a small matchstick-sized piece of plastic inserted into your arm casually at your doctor’s office? Answer: yes, but it’s also AWESOME.
Do You Ovulate On Birth Control Pills? Here’s How They Affect Your Cycle
If you take birth control pills, or you’re trying to find the best method of contraception for you, you may have asked yourself, “Do you ovulate on birth control pills?” The short answer is “No.” Birth control pills are designed to prevent ovulation, and, on the off chance that you do ovulate while on the pill, it works with two other back up methods to prevent pregnancy. That’s why the pill is so good at preventing pregnancy — in fact, it’s more than 99 percent effective when used perfectly.
Woman’s bid to use deceased daughter’s eggs continues
A 60-year-old woman who wants to use her late daughter’s frozen eggs to give birth to her own grandchild is continuing her legal battle.
No Ovarian Protection in Cancer With GnRH Agonist(2)
After more than 5 years of follow-up, women who received a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) did not have higher rates of ovarian reserve or pregnancy, as compared with women who received chemotherapy without the GnRHa. Premature ovarian failure had significant associations with patient age, the conditioning regimen for hemopoietic stem cell transplant, and cumulative dose of cyclophosphamide but not the use of a GnRHa, as reported online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Why Women Can’t Stop Talking About Freezing Their eggs
Egg freezing — the process of extracting eggs and storing them for later — is an appealing concept for some women. It can unshackle a woman from her biological clock while preserving the possibility of getting pregnant later in life.