Tag: fertility clock

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Study: Hormone Use By Postmenopausal Women Keeps Dropping

brigitte

The number of U.S. women popping post-menopausal hormone pills didn’t just drop after one big study a decade ago — it kept dropping through at least 2010, a large new study shows.

As of 2009-2010, just 4.7% of women over age 40 said they were taking the hormones (estrogen or estrogen plus progestin), at least in pill form, says the study of 10,107 women published this week in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

That’s down from 22.4% in the years 1999 through 2002, says researchers led by Brian L. Sprague of the University of Vermont. The big plunge first showed up in 2003-2004 — after the 2002 publication of results from the Women’s Health Initiative. That study linked the combination of estrogen and progestin with breast cancer, heart disease and stroke and found average risks outweighed benefits. It left women seeking other solutions — many of them not very effective — for hot flashes, vaginal dryness and other menopause symptoms. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Early Menopause: A Genetic Mouse Model of Human Primary Ovarian Insufficiency

brigitte

Scientists have established a genetic mouse model for primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), a human condition in which women experience irregular menstrual cycles and reduced fertility, and early exposure to estrogen deficiency.

POI affects approximately one in a hundred women. In most cases of primary ovarian insufficiency, the cause is mysterious, although genetics is known to play a causative role. There are no treatments designed to help preserve fertility. Some women with POI retain some ovarian function and a fraction (5-10 percent) have children after receiving the diagnosis. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Father’s Age Linked to Autism and Schizophrenia

brigitte

Older men are more likely than young ones to father a child who develops autism or schizophrenia, because of random mutations that become more numerous with advancing paternal age, scientists reported on Wednesday, in the first study to quantify the effect as it builds each year. The age of mothers had no bearing on the risk for these disorders, the study found.

Experts said that the finding was hardly reason to forgo fatherhood later in life, though it might have some influence on reproductive decisions. The overall risk to a man in his 40s or older is in the range of 2 percent, at most, and there are other contributing biological factors that are entirely unknown.

But the study, published online in the journal Nature, provides support for the argument that the surging rate of autism diagnoses over recent decades is attributable in part to the increasing average age of fathers, which could account for as many as 20 to 30 percent of cases.

The findings also counter the longstanding assumption that the age of the mother is the most important factor in determining the odds of a child having developmental problems. The risk of chromosomal abnormalities, likeDown syndrome, increases for older mothers, but when it comes to some complex developmental and psychiatric problems, the lion’s share of the genetic risk originates in the sperm, not the egg, the study found. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Katie Couric discusses fitness and menopause: Turning 55 was a wake-up call

brigitte

Television journalist Katie Couric doesn’t mind getting older, but admits that turning 55 was a major wake-up call alerting her that time is indeed running short.

“Being in the last half of your life is very scary,” Couric tells the September 2012 issue of Good Housekeeping. “Turning 55 was more of a wake-up call for me than 50 was. I’m very aware of getting every drop of joy from the present.”

Katie, who’s going through menopause, made a renewed commitment to working out to ward off menopausal weight gain.

“I kept hearing, ‘Your weight is going to re-distribute, you’re going to get thick in the middle.’ So I decided I needed to be more committed to exercising,” says Couric. “I’ve always done exercise, but I’ve never really committed to it. I’m not very good about pushing myself physically.” Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Rethinking Reproductive Biology

brigitte

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.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Couple’s struggle to have a child leads to surrogacy

brigitte

Dawn Kornstein felt the pain again.

The medication wasn’t working. There was nothing more the doctors could do. The contractions kept coming.

Dawn was 5½ months pregnant with twins, and the pain intensified with every breath. Her skin took on a gray pallor. The alarms hooked up to her monitors screamed every 15 minutes or so.

The doctor gave Dawn and her husband, Mike, the grim news: Baby Alex wasn’t going to make it. But if they delivered Alex and tied off the cord, maybe they could save Ben.

Maybe.

Dawn and Mike said goodbye to one son and willed the other to wait just a few more weeks before being born. Those weeks could make all the difference in whether he would live.

Ben died the day after his brother.

Devastated, the couple clung to this mantra: We can try again. We can have other children.

The dream is simple: To have a baby.

In generations past, couples faced with infertility had two choices: adopt a child or accept life without one.

Advances in medicine and science have provided more options: Fertility drugs. Artificial insemination. In vitro fertilization. Sperm donors. Egg donors. Surrogate mothers.

Approximately 2.7 million American couples put their faith in one or more of these options every year.

Still, not everyone who begins the quest ends with a baby. Only about 65% of women who seek fertility treatment ultimately give birth.

There are limits to what science can do, what government allows and what society supports.

Laws have not kept pace with medical innovations, leaving judges to make important decisions about the intersection of biology and parenthood with little or no guidance. What is rewarded as innovation in one state can be outlawed in another.

For some couples, the financial costs climb too high. For others, the personal costs become insurmountable.

This was the new world Dawn and Mike were entering. For them, the key to parenthood lay in Wisconsin – 1,000 miles from their Connecticut home.

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Americans put off having babies amid poor economy

brigitte

Twenty-somethings who postponed having babies because of the poor economy are still hesitant to jump in to parenthood — an unexpected consequence that has dropped the USA’s birthrate to its lowest point in 25 years.

The fertility rate is not expected to rebound for at least two years and could affect birthrates for years to come, according to Demographic Intelligence, a Charlottesville, Va., company that produces quarterly birth forecasts for consumer products and pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Procter & Gamble.

Marketers track fertility trends closely because they affect sales of thousands of products from diapers, cribs and minivans to baby bottles, toys and children’s pain relievers.

As the economy tanked, the average number of births per woman fell 12% from a peak of 2.12 in 2007. Demographic Intelligence projects the rate to hit 1.87 this year and 1.86 next year — the lowest since 1987.

The less-educated and Hispanics have experienced the biggest birthrate decline while the share of U.S. births to college-educated, non-Hispanic whites and Asian Americans has grown.

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Women Face Decision on Risks, Benefits of Hormone Therapy

brigitte

For women of a certain age, there comes a moment of truth. The moment arrives after sleepless nights, a lot of sweat and maybe even some tears.

Inevitably, though, virtually all women must make a decision: Can I endure the symptoms of menopause or should I undertake hormone replacement therapy?

Oddly enough, there is no single — or simple — answer for all women. Your best friend may have the same symptoms or none. The same goes for your sister, and even your mother’s experience is of no help because menopause is a highly personalized condition. Treatments also vary depending on the severity of the symptoms and the person — some need a single hormone, others combinations of two hormones. Other medications also can help, including birth control pills, anti-anxiety drugs and even natural remedies.

“We have to talk about it,” said Dr. Nigel Delahunty of Greer Ob/Gyn. “We inform them of all the potential risks and see what they need and want.”

Delahunty has been practicing medicine for 17 years, and during that time the way to help women get through their menopausal years — in terms of the use and popularity of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) — has changed dramatically.

“It has fluctuated over time,” said Dr. Margery Gass, executive director of The North American Menopause Society based in Cleveland. “But what has remained the same is that estrogen has been effective in treating symptoms for more than 30 years.”

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

How Millennial Women and Their Eggs Can Have It All

brigitte

I’m sitting across the desk from my neurologist, Dr. Gayatri Devi, the Director of the New York Memory Services, a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University School of Medicine, President of the National Council on Women’s Health and author of The Calm Brain.

Me: Twenty years ago I was diagnosed as being infertile and underwent five years of infertility treatment. It was a physical and emotional roller coaster. Daily doctor visits. Blood tests and hormones that I never knew existed were injected into my body. Every month I would pray and hope to hear, “You’re pregnant.” Every month I spent thousands of dollars to get a ticket for this ride (insurance didn’t cover infertility treatment). I look back and realize it was like I was possessed. Or maybe it was more like I was in infertility jail – I couldn’t get out, not even for good behavior. My mantra was, “Just one more month.” I thought it was like other things in life that worked for me – try harder and I’ll succeed.
Dr. Devi: How old were you?

Me: 34-39 years old.

Dr. Devi: Were you ever pregnant?

Me: Yes, when I was in my 20s. I had a miscarriage.

Dr. Devi: You are not infertile. In your mid to late 30s, you were trying to get pregnant at a less than optimal time in a women’s reproductive cycle. The reality is that you could have been very fertile in your 20s. You could have had babies every year in your 20s. But in your mid to late 30s, you were trying to conceive when timing wasn’t on your side.

Then Dr. Devi said something that made me really think: “We use technology for everything else in life, why not embrace technology to give women child-bearing strategies and choices?” 

What does she mean by that? Freezing eggs when women are most fertile – in their 20s, not their 30s. According to the Reproductive Biology Associates: “Fertility in women is greatest when they are between 20 and 28 years of age. By the age of 35, a woman’s chance of conceiving per month is decreased by half. By age 45, the natural fertility rate per month is reduced to only 1%.”

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

New OB/GYN Guidelines Urge Annual Wellness Visits

brigitte

Obstetricians and gynecologists want women to keep coming to them for annual exams, even though women are no longer advised to get yearly Pap tests to screen for cervical cancer.

In new guidelines published Monday, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists makes the case for an annual “well-woman” visit and continues to recommend annual pelvic exams for women older than age 21. But the doctors’ group also says “no evidence supports or refutes,” the value of the internal exam for finding signs of cancer or other problems in women with no symptoms. So the final decision is up to women and their doctors, the group says.

The guidelines come a few months after it, the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and several other groups said most women need a Pap smear only every three years, starting at age 21, and can get them even less frequently after age 30 if they also get tests for the cancer-causing human papillomavirus. Women with no history of problems can stop Pap tests at 65, the groups say.

But a Pap smear, in which cells are scraped from the cervix, is not a pelvic exam and a pelvic exam is just part of a preventive visit, the gynecologists’ group says.

Read full article.