Protein Boosts Sex Hormones, Suggesting Infertility Therapy

Giving a special hormone to infertile women can dramatically increase their production of sex hormones, which may lead to a new infertility treatment for women with low sex hormone levels, a recent study demonstrated.
    
The work, which was led by Waljit Dhillo of the Department of Investigative Medicine at Imperial College London, was presented at a meeting of the Society for Endocrinology BES.

 - Protein Boosts Sex Hormones, Suggesting Infertility Therapy

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Using Frozen Embryos Increases Pregnancy Chances

The regular use of carefully chosen frozen embryos left over from fertility treatments dramatically increases the pregnancy success rate among infertile couples, a British clinic has found.
    
The new regimen holds the promise of sharply reducing the time a couple has to wait for a baby, and of alleviating the risk to women of repeated cycles of side-effect-ridden fertility drugs, which can lead to polycystic ovary syndrome.

 - Using Frozen Embryos Increases Pregnancy Chances

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Unicellular Test Lets Doctors Weed Out Mutated Embryos

A technique that allows doctors to find dangerous "microdeletions" in human embryo chromosomes can be used to reject embryos prone to developing cancer and other diseases in later life and to implant only healthy embryos, according to a recent study. Up till now, gene assays could detect only pinpoint mutations, but the new technique allows for finding much larger chromosomal flaws and deletions. (Read more about Unicellular Test Lets Doctors Weed Out Mutated Embryos)

 - Unicellular Test Lets Doctors Weed Out Mutated Embryos

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Scientists Clone Vital Sperm Protein

A protein vital for male fertility has been cloned, produced and purified, a recent study reported. The findings may open up new pathways in male fertility treatment and methods of male contraception.
   
The study, published in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction, recounted how researchers identified the binder of sperm protein (BSP), which is essential for sperm maturation, and then used genetic engineering techniques to produce it in significant quantities.

 - Scientists Clone Vital Sperm Protein

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Infertility Treatment Jeopardize Pregnant Women's Health

Having three or more miscarriages and undergoing hormone treatment for infertility increase pregnant women’s risk for pre-eclampsia, a condition of high blood pressure during pregnancy, a recent investigation shows.

In the study, which was published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health examined data on over 20,000 first-time mothers from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. Their baseline for normalcy was the pre-eclampsia rate among first-time mothers who had never miscarried nor undergone fertility treatment, which was 5.2 percent.

 - Infertility Treatment Jeopardize Pregnant Women's Health

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Sperm Quality Worsens With Obesity

Obese men are three times more likely than normal-weight men to have low sperm counts and to have sperm that don't "swim upstream," a recent study showed.

"There is a strong relationship between overweight and obesity and altered sperm parameters," wrote Ahmad O. Hammoud and his colleagues at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. They published their work in the journal Fertility and Sterility. They say studies in the future should examine this relationship over time, and also study whether losing weight improves sperm quality. (Read more about Sperm Quality Worsens With Obesity)

 - Sperm Quality Worsens With Obesity

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Eating Less Extends Fertility

Eating less and more healthily may be just the ticket for women to add years to their fertile lives - as well as boosting their sex drive and sexual satisfaction, which are part and parcel of fertility. This is true if a study done recently with mice can be extrapolated to humans. In the research, performed by a team led by Kaisa Selesniemi of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, adult female mice were fed less, and it was found that the aging process in their ovaries was slowed. This led to an extension of their fertility by a considerable number of months, which would translate into many years for women.

 - Eating Less Extends Fertility

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"Fertility Tourism" Carries Health Risks

Women who go to overseas fertility clinics run the risk of higher-than-average multiple pregnancies, which can dramatically increase the chances of high blood pressure, hospital stays, premature labor, fetal disabilities and even death in mother or babies. A study done on 109 British women with multiple pregnancies showed that 15 were conceived naturally and, of the 94 remaining, 25 percent had received fertility treatment outside of Britain - so-called fertility tourism.

 - "Fertility Tourism" Carries Health Risks

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Natural Fertility Method Superior, Study Says

Whereas in vitro fertilization (IVF) achieves pregnancy success rates in Europe of 18.4 percent, a recent study has found a quarter of couples can do the same using natural procreative (NaPro) technology. NaPro technology was developed by obstetrician and gynecologist Thomas W. Hilgers in Omaha, Neb. Central to the technique is educating women and couples how to precisely monitor and chart female bodily "markers" that indicate fertility and fertility problems. This allows the NaPro technology practitioner to zero in on abnormal menstrual bleeding patterns, poor cervical mucus flow and subtle hormonal deficiencies that are often not detected by routine gynecological evaluation. Once the biological problem is identified, a precisely targeted solution can be undertaken.

 - Natural Fertility Method Superior, Study Says

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Seven Steps to Increasing Your Fertility

You probably know that changes in diet and exercise can effect improve you heart and decrease your risk of cancer. But a recent study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology found that women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors. Ovulatory problems have been indentified in between 18 to 30 percent of infertility cases.

 - Seven Steps to Increasing Your Fertility

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