Tag: eggs

Fertility Clock Blog, My Future Baby Blog

Egg Freezing No Longer Experimental

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Egg freezing is no longer considered “experimental” by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).

Last week the ASRM lifted the “experimental” designation on egg freezing. This decision was based on published studies indicating that frozen eggs worked as well as fresh eggs in young women. Safety data was also reassuring.

While it is promising to see the “experimental” designation lifted, the ASRM still maintains that egg freezing should not be used to counteract reproductive aging – in other words, those women over the age of 35 seeking fertility preservation. The reason for this stance continues to be a lack of published data on birth rates and safety in this group of women.

In 2009 I was invited by the ASRM to participate in a national debate on the “experimental” designation of egg freezing. My conclusions at that time still hold true:  women who wish to counteract reproductive aging  should be given the opportunity to make an informed decision on egg freezing after being counseled on the appropriate risks and alternatives and should seek advice and treatment from an experienced physician who has demonstrated births from eggs of women frozen while in their 30’s.

You can read the in-depth report released by the the ASRM about oocyte cryopreservation here.

by Dr. John Jain

 

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We Need to Talk About Our Eggs

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WHEN I recently mentioned to a pregnant acquaintance that I was writing a book about egg freezing (and had frozen my own eggs in hopes of preserving my ability to have children well into my 40s), she replied, “You’re so lucky. I wish I had known to freeze my eggs.”

She was 40 years old and wanted two children, so she and her husband were planning to start trying to conceive a second child shortly after the birth of their first. “Now everything is a rush,” she said. Married at 38, she didn’t think to talk to her obstetrician-gynecologist about fertility before then. If her doctor had brought up the subject, she said, she might have put away some eggs when she was younger. Read full article.

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New Report on Egg Freezing; ASRM Lifts Experimental Label from Technique

ASRM News and Research

The Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) issued a new report today stating that in young patients egg freezing techniques have been shown to produce pregnancy rates, leading to the birth of healthy babies, comparable to IVF cycles using fresh eggs.

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Researchers Re-Create Eggs to Treat Infertility

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Researchers working with laboratory rats have developed a technique that could someday help infertile women who lack usable eggs because of a hormone imbalance to conceive with new eggs created from their own ovaries.

Many women are unable to conceive because of a condition known as polycystic ovary syndrome, in which the ovaries fail to secrete enough hormones to stimulate egg production.  Injury to the ovaries caused by radiation or surgery also can interfere with a woman’s ability to produce enough viable eggs, or oocytes, to achieve pregnancy. Read full article.

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Multicultural IVF Call – Australia

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MULTICULTURAL donors are being called on to help fill a growing IVF demand for children from different racial backgrounds.

Demand for IVF is outstripping supply, resulting in a shortage of both sperm and eggs.

The shortage has prompted a new advertising campaign by award-winning clinic Tas IVF looking for donors.

And for the first time the clinic has called for multicultural donors.

Tas IVF director Bill Watkins said there was a growing number of people from different racial backgrounds, including people from the Middle East and India, wanting sperm and eggs. Read full article.

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Semen’s Secret Ingredient Induces Ovulation

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If you’re trying to avoid getting pregnant, here’s another reason to mistrust the rhythm method of birth control: New research confirms that the fluid in semen, long dismissed as primarily a vehicle for sperm, contains a substance that can trigger ovulation and other pregnancy-supporting hormonal responses in female mammals. The find could lead to new fertility treatments in humans.

Like most female animals, women are spontaneous ovulators, meaning they release eggs on a fairly regular basis regardless of their sexual activity. A few animal species, however, such as camels and rabbits, release viable eggs only in response to sex. These animals are called “induced ovulators.” For decades, scientific dogma has held that in induced ovulators, the physical stimulation of sex triggers hormonal responses within the female that lead to the production and release of eggs. In 1985, however, a group of Chinese researchers challenged this idea by suggesting that there might be an ovulation-inducing factor (OIF) in semen itself. According to veterinarian and reproductive biologist Gregg Adams of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, the hypothesis ran so counter to common wisdom that “people just ignored it. Me included.”

When Adams and his colleagues finally tested the idea decades later, they were taken aback by their results. In 2005, the team injected the seminal fluid of male llamas — closely related to camels — into the hind legs of female llamas to see if the llamas would ovulate without genital stimulation. To their surprise, he says, injecting seminal fluid into the female llamas’ bloodstream had “a very potent ovulatory effect.” Read full article.

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Rethinking Reproductive Biology

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Everyone knows that women are born with all the eggs they can ever make, right? Well, a recent study shows that everyone just might be wrong.

This doesn’t just change how we think about reproductive biology. It has real world implications for lots of infertile women too.

A woman makes all of her eggs while she is still in the womb. The way it works is that a group of cells called germ cells divides until they are nearly mature. These 400,000 or so cells then wait around until the woman is born and enters puberty. Then, around one cell per month matures and is released. By menopause, the average woman has released about 400 mature eggs.

Scientists thought for a long time that once ovaries made their batch of immature eggs, they lost this ability forever. They were mistaken. This study showed that a woman’s ovaries still have a few cells that retain their potential to become eggs.

These researchers not only identified these oogonial stem cells (or OSCs), but also managed to collect a few and to coax them into becoming immature oocytes in a petri dish. They then matured these immature oocytes in a mouse’s ovary. These scientists had created new eggs from cells found in a woman’s ovaries.

Red full article.

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Frozen Sperm Offer a Lifeline for Coral

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COCONUT ISLAND, Hawaii — Just before sunset, on the campus of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Mary Hagedorn waited for her mushroom corals to spawn.

As corals go, Fungia is fairly reliable, usually releasing its sperm and eggs two days after the full moon. Today was Day 3. “Sometimes we get skunked,” she fretted.

The recalcitrant corals sat outdoors in water-filled glass dishes, arranged in rows on a steel lab table. Each was about the size and shape of a portobello mushroom cap, with a sunburst of brown ribs radiating from a pink, tightly sealed mouth.
As Dr. Hagedorn and her assistant watched, one coral tightened its mouth and seemed to exhale, propelling a cloud of sperm into its bath with surprising vigor. The water bubbled like hot oatmeal.

A reproductive physiologist with the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Hagedorn, 57, is building what is essentially a sperm bank for the world’s corals. She hopes her collection — gathered in recent years from corals in Hawaii, the Caribbean and Australia — will someday be used to restore and even rebuild damaged reefs.

She estimates that she has frozen one trillion coral sperm, enough to fertilize 500 million to one billion eggs. In addition, there are three billion frozen embryonic cells; some have characteristics of stem cells, meaning they may have the potential to grow into adult corals.

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Blog, My Future Baby Blog

What is Minimal Stimulation IVF?

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Minimal Stimulation IVF differs from traditional IVF in the type and amount of fertility medications used to stimulate the growth of egg follicles.

Traditional IVF uses injections of the hormone FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) to stimulate the growth of multiple eggs which are then harvested from the ovary and fertilized in the laboratory (in-vitro fertilization) before being transferred to the uterus as embryos.

With Mini Stim IVF, a tablet form of fertility medication called clomiphene citrate is taken for 5 days to increase the natural production of FSH in order to recruit multiple egg follicles. Hormonal injections may be used for a few days but at much lower doses than used in traditional IVF.

Although fewer eggs are recruited with Mini Stim IVF, the ones that do grow are believed to be highest in quality. Other benefits include less injections, shorter treatment times and lower cost. Mini Stim IVF is a good alternative for women who respond poorly to traditional hormonal stimulation or have failed traditional IVF.

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So Eager for Grandchildren, They’re Paying the Egg-Freezing Clinic

ASRM News and Research

At the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine, a popular destination for women hoping to preserve their fertility by freezing their eggs, Dr. William Schoolcraft, the founder and medical director, has started to notice something different: more of the women are arriving with company.