Tag: infertility

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Infertile couples turn to disputed therapy

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infertile couplesAs their van rumbled away from the McDonald’s, onto the Arizona road and toward Mexico a mile away, the Kowalskis wondered if the family they’d long envisioned having would finally become real.

Jennifer Benito-Kowalski and Steve Kowalski had traveled 950 miles from their San Carlos home. A clinic just over the border would be the latest stop in a journey three years in the making: the quest to get pregnant.

Natural conception hadn’t happened, fertility treatments had failed and the doctors were out of ideas. At 38, Benito-Kowalski worried she’d never be a mother.

Ultimately, the Kowalskis would pay a surrogate in India to carry their child, who is due in May. But that decision was months away.

In 2011, the couple turned to the Alan E. Beer Center for Reproductive Immunology and Genetics, a Los Gatos clinic with an international reputation for curing frustrated, vulnerable women of infertility.

But the clinic’s methods involve experimental therapies that outside studies have concluded do not work and that insurers often do not cover. One therapy, in which a woman is repeatedly injected with her partner’s blood cells, has been prohibited in the United States for more than a decade. That hasn’t stopped Beer’s doctors from directing hundreds of patients to clinics outside the country to have it done – and pay thousands of out-of-pocket dollars. Read full article.

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Embryo options needed – Australia

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IVF participants need more support and clearer options when deciding what to do with unused frozen embryos, a new national study has found.

Researchers from the Sydney University of Technology’s law faculty found states including Tasmania had limited legal structures in place to support people making decisions about frozen embryos.

Many IVF participants end up with a surplus of embryos and the report, officially released today, makes 57 recommendations for changes to laws, policy and practices covering storage limits, the use of embryos after the death of a partner and donation of embryos.

Professor Jenni Millbank, an author of the report, said the five-year storage limit should be doubled to give people more time to expand their families or consider other alternatives.

“Law should not set blanket storage periods that enforce destruction of embryos after a set period, nor should they prevent donation (to other infertile people) if that is desired,” she said.

The findings were based on interviews with 54 people across Australia including two Tasmanians, who had either donated or received donor embryos, or gone through a separation since freezing embryos. Read full article.

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Health: Body and soul

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Psychological side of infertility has been ignored compared to physiological factors that prevent couples from having a baby.

Biomedical treatments to help infertile couples become parents have advanced greatly in recent years, but psychological treatment to help them cope has lagged way behind. And sometimes, the emotional distress from depression and anxiety alone is a key factor that actually holds back the hoped-for pregnancy.

Fortunately, awareness of this mind-body connection to infertility is growing and the appearance of a Hebrew volume on the subject will certainly give it a push. Called Lehavi Yeladim La’olam (To Bear a Child), released by Aryeh Nir Publishers in Tel Aviv, the book is an important example.

The 256-page, NIS 89 softcover volume was written by Dr. Zvia Birman and Prof.

Eliezer Witztum. Birman is a longtime fertility researcher who was head of the social workers unit in the pediatric, obstetrical and gynecological departments at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem and has provided individual and group therapy to many infertile couples over the last two decades.

Witztum is a leading psychiatrist at Beersheba’s Mental Health Center and Ben- Gurion University and specializes in the complex relationship between culture and society and mind-body. Read full article.

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Infertility Challenges: Facing the Issue with Action, Caring and Coping

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Risa and Eli, a couple married for two years and in their twenties, were anxious to start a family, but found themselves unable to conceive. *Chana, engaged at 39, was worried that at her age it would be difficult to get pregnant. *Miriam, a widow, had three children from her first marriage. Ten years after her husband passed away, she remarried. She was now 37 and her new husband, *Avi was 40. They wanted a child of their own, but close to a year into their marriage, she had not become pregnant – what to do?

Reproduction research done by the National Infertility Association shows that 7.3 million people in the United States, representing 12% of women of childbearing age, are affected by this problem. Infertility is defined, for women under the age of 35, as an inability to conceive after one year of trying to have a child. When a woman passes the age of 35, if she is trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for six months, she should seek help. Besides having difficulty in conceiving, part of the problem for women of this age may also include the inability to carry a pregnancy to live birth. It also may not be her fault. Statistically, the causes for infertility are attributed equally to the female partner, the male partner, or a combination of both partners, or they may be unexplained. Read full article.

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Saturated fat tied to sinking sperm counts in Danes

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Saturated fats, like those found in rich cheeses and meats, may do more than weigh men down after a meal – a new study also links them to dwindling sperm counts.

Researchers found that young Danish men who ate the most saturated fats had a 38 percent lower concentration of sperm and 41 percent lower sperm counts in their semen than those who ate the least fat.

“We cannot say that it has a causal effect, but I think other studies have shown that saturated fat intake has shown a connection to other problems and now also for sperm count,” said Tina Jensen, the study’s lead author from Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen.

The new research is not the first to connect diet and other lifestyle factors to sperm production and quality.

In 2011, Brazilian researchers found eating more grains – such as wheat, oats or barley – was associated with improved sperm concentration and motility, and fruit was also linked to a speed and agility boost in sperm (see Reuters Health story of November 18, 2011 here: http://reut.rs/TBfCrA).

But that study and most others looked at these associations using data on men seeking fertility treatments, which may not be representative of all men. Read full article.

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Is infertility a disability?

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Is infertility a disability?
‘Disabilities are an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. Impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives’.

If you use the above definition. Is infertility is a disability?  To help you to make your decision, I include a few facts. As many members are male, it may seem that descriptions are over emotive. Infertility is an emotive subject. I have written this as honestly as I can in the hope that reading it will cause people to think before they respond with unnecessary harshness and insensitivity.

Infertility is often caused by very painful physical gynaecological problems. Endometriosis and polycystic ovaries being the most common. Most doctors will tell any woman that the best known cure for these problems is to have a pregnancy. Some women have been given IVF solely for this reason and it has worked. Symptoms have reduced significantly after she’d had a child. Read full article.

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Hugh Jackman: Our Infertility Battle Was a ‘Difficult Time’

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He may be one of the most doting dads in Hollywood, but thepath to parenthood was a difficult one for Hugh Jackman.

Before the actor and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness welcomed Oscar Maximillian, 12, and Ava Eliot, 7, through adoption, they fought a long battle with infertility, undergoing IVF treatments only to have the resulting pregnancies end in miscarriages.

“It is a difficult time. The miscarriage thing — apparently it happens to one in three pregnancies — but it’s very, very rarely talked about,” Jackman, 44, said during a Tuesday appearance on Katie.

“It’s almost secretive. But it’s a good thing to talk about. It’s more common and it’s tough, there’s a grieving process you have to go through.”

Now the adoring dad of a son and daughter, the Les Miserables star says adoption was never a last resort; It has always been a part of the couple’s parenting plans.

“To be clear, Deb and I always wanted to adopt,” he explains. “We didn’t know where in the process that would happen, but biologically, obviously, we tried and it was not happening for us.” Read full article.

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Our Infertile Years

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My husband flicked the syringe to remove the air bubbles. Aside from hipsters lounging at candlelit tables across the street, the sidewalks were clear. If we worked together, I could shoot up before anyone walked by. By the glow of the dome light, I pulled up my shirt, unbuttoned my pants and swiped an alcohol pad across my stomach while he prepared the injection.

I held my breath, and he plunged the needle in my belly, ringed with the bruises that marked his love for me. For an upcoming fertility treatment, I had to inject myself that evening, during the hours I attended a book reading in Los Feliz. By the time my husband and I left the reception — where the two of us going into the house’s sole bathroom would have perplexed guests – it was too late to wait until we returned home. Read full article.

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Women’s Knowledge on Infertility: Interview with Barbara Collura

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In the United States, 7.3 million people are affected by infertility, in which a couple cannot conceive, according to RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association.

There are two categories of infertility. They are primary infertility and secondary infertility. With primary infertility, pregnancy has not occurred after at least a year of intercourse. With secondary infertility, couples have been able to get pregnant at least once, but have not been able to get pregnant again.

This year at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine Annual Meeting (ASRM), the results of the In the Know: Fertility IQ 2012 survey were presented. The survey, which included more than 400 health care providers, found significant difference between what health care providers are reporting and what patients are reporting. Read entire article.