Tag: fertility life cycle

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Nigeria: ‘By Freezing Their Eggs, Women Can Extend Their Fertility’

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Miranda, a 29-year-old mother of two has just had her eggs frozen and stored. The decision was not by chance but by choice, she told Good Health Weekly last week at her Lagos home.

Miranda is one of the fast growing group of Nigerian women who opt for egg freezing and storage for the pupose of bearing children in future. The decision to take this revolutionary step was borne out of necessity.

She was diagnosed with cervical cancer last year and hopes to continue to bear children from the frozen eggs as soon as she completes the series of radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment.

Biologically, a woman’s fertility declines in her 30s. Thanks to egg freezing, the ticking biological clock can be quietened.

The origins of egg freezing in fertility treatment go back to the late 60s, with experiments on mice.

The first successful pregnancy from a frozen egg occurred in 1986, in Australia. But while the procedure was developed by doctors to help cancer patients and women at risk of an early menopause, however, fertility experts believe that more and more women flocking to fertility clinics in Nigeria may be doing so more for medically advised reasons than for social reasons. Read full article.

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Promising Solution To Revitalizing Aging Egg Cells

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An Ottawa scientist has discovered a critical reason why women experience fertility problems as they get older. The breakthrough by Dr. Johne Liu, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and professor at the University of Ottawa, also points to a simple solution that could increase the viability of egg cells for women in their late 30s and older – putrescine water.

In an online editorial published by Agingbased on his recently published findings, Liu outlines how a simple program of drinking water or taking a pill that contains the naturally occurring compound putrescine could reduce the rate at which middle-aged women produce eggs with the incorrect number of chromosomes, the leading cause of reduced fertility and increases in miscarriages and congenital birth defects.

Putrescine is naturally produced in mammals by an enzyme called ornithine decarboxylase,or ODC, and is easily absorbed and cleared by the body. In female mammals, ODC levels are known to rise during ovulation, when the egg cell matures and is released from the ovary. Dr. Liu has shown that ODC levels rise very little in older females. He has also shown that inhibiting ODC levels in young mice leads to an increase in egg cells with chromosomal defects. Read full article.

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Soy: No effect on menopausal hot flashes

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(Medical Xpress)—A team of investigators led by UC Davis found that eating soy products such as soy milk and tofu did not prevent the onset of hot flashes and night sweats as women entered menopause.

Unlike previous studies investigating the relationship between soy and these menopausal symptoms, the current study included a very large population over a long period of time: more than 1,600 women over 10 years. The article, titled “Phytoestrogen and Fiber Intakes in Relation to Incident Vasomotor Symptoms: Results from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation,” was published online today in Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society and will appear in the March 2013 print issue of the journal. Read full article.

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Freezing Eggs To Make Babies Later Moves Toward Mainstream

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Doctors who specialize in treating infertility are making a big change in their position on a controversial practice. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) has concluded that freezing women’s eggs to treat infertility should no longer be considered “experimental.”

The group plans to officially announce the change on Monday.

More and more women are using frozen eggs to try to have babies. Some older women use frozen eggs donated by younger women. Some younger women freeze their own eggs while they finish school, focus on their jobs or keep looking for the right guy.

That’s why Jennifer Anderson did it last year.

“I really wanted to have the traditional experience of falling in love and getting married, and then having children. But I know every person’s life path is different, and it hadn’t worked out for me yet to fall in love and get married,” says Anderson, 40, a consultant who lives in Arlington, Va.

So Anderson went to the Shady Grove Fertility clinic in Rockville, Md., to freeze some of her eggs. Read full article.

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Moodiness, Hot Flashes, Sleep Problems? It May Be Peri-Menopause

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At this stage in my life — moving into my late 30s, with many friends rounding the corner into their 40s — I’m starting to hear rumblings, rumors and some early ranting about peri-menopause, and I don’t particularly like it.

Although it means a winding up of your reproductive years and seems to signal getting, um, old, there’s no real reason for dread or alarm, says gynecologist Margery Gass, executive director of the nonprofit North American Menopause Society. “Peri-menopause is a normal and natural phase of a woman’s life — it’s not a deficiency state and it’s not a disease,” she says, noting that peri-menopause ends — and menopause begins — when a woman hasn’t had a period in a full year. Read full article.

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Early Menopause May Double Heart Disease Risk, Study Says

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WEDNESDAY, Sept. 19 (HealthDay News) — Women who experience early menopause may face double the risk of heart disease and stroke, according to a new study.

This increased risk is true across different ethnic backgrounds and is independent of traditional heart disease and stroke risk factors, the researchers said.

The study included more than 2,500 women, aged 45 to 84, who were followed for between six and eight years. Twenty-eight percent of the women reported early menopause, which occurs before the age of 46. Read full article.

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Study: Hormone Use By Postmenopausal Women Keeps Dropping

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.