Women with cystic fibrosis can have fertility treatment to help them have babies without any long-term adverse effects on either themselves or their children, according to new research presented at the 25th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam today.
Until relatively recently, cystic fibrosis (CF) was a death sentence and most people with the disease died by the time they reached their teenage years. Now, this is no longer the case, and, thanks to better treatment of the condition, people live far longer and want to start their own families. But women with CF face a problem in addition to the effects of pregnancy on their health: CF itself can make them infertile.
In the first, long-running study to investigate and evaluate systematically the use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) in a group of infertile women with CF, researchers based at the Hôpital Cochin Saint Vincent de Paul in Paris (France) looked at 24 women between 1998 and 2008. After assessing their health, three women were discouraged from undergoing fertility treatment for medical reasons and six are still being assessed. However, the remaining 15 women all received fertility treatment.
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Tags : Cystic Fibrosis, fertility, ivf
Sportsmen who carry out high levels of cycle training could be damaging their chance of fatherhood, researchers reported on Monday.
The research team looked at triathletes — athletes who run, swim and cycle — to further a probe into a long-suspected link between male infertility and long-distance biking.
They looked at semen provided by 15 healthy Spanish triathletes whose training routines were known in detail.
The more time the triathletes spent in the saddle, the worse their sperm fared, said the research team, which Diana Vaamonde led at the University of Cordoba Medical School in Spain.
“While all triathletes had less than 10 percent of normal-looking sperm, the men with less than 4 percent — at which percentage they generally would be considered to have significant fertility problems — were systematically” 180 miles a week on their bicycles, Vaamonde said.
No such link was seen for running and swimming.
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Tags : cycling, infertility, sperm
Washington, June 30: French doctors have unveiled a new technique for transplanting the ovaries of women who have lost their fertility as a result of cancer treatment.
The technique, described by Pascal Piver of the Limoges University Hospital in central-western France, has helped a young woman who had been menopausal for two years to give birth to a healthy baby girl.
Using a two-step process, they restored fertility to the woman after she had undergone chemotherapy treatment for sickle-cell anaemia, a disease in which red blood cells become dangerously misshaped.
Ovarian transplants, pioneered in 2004, entail removing an ovary from a woman before she undergoes cancer therapy. The organ is frozen and then thawed and returned to the patient after her treatment.
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Tags : egg donations, infertility
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Daily sex (or ejaculating daily) for seven days improves men’s sperm quality by reducing the amount of DNA damage, according to an Australian study presented today (Tuesday) to the 25th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam.
Until now there has been no evidence-based consensus amongst fertility specialists as to whether or not men should refrain from sex for a few days before attempting to conceive with their partner, either spontaneously or via assisted reproduction.
Dr David Greening, an obstetrician and gynaecologist with sub specialist training in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Sydney IVF, Wollongong, Australia, said: “All that we knew was that intercourse on the day of ovulation offered the highest chance of pregnancy, but we did not know what was the best advice for the period leading up to ovulation or egg retrieval for IVF.
“I thought that frequent ejaculation might be a physiological mechanism to improve sperm DNA damage, while maintaining semen levels within the normal, fertile range”
To investigate this hypothesis, Dr Greening studied 118 men who had higher than normal sperm DNA damage as indicated by a DNA Fragmentation Index (DFI). Men who had a more than 15% of their sperm (DFI more than 15%) damaged were eligible for the trial. At Sydney IVF, sperm DNA damage is defined as less than 15% DFI for excellent quality sperm, 15-24% DFI for good, 25-29% DFI for fair and more than 29% DFI for poor quality; but other laboratories can have slightly different ranges.
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Tags : infertility, ivf, sperm
Many people who consider open adoption do so after enduring infertility. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Melissa Ford, author of Navigating the Land of IF: Understanding Infertility and Exploring Your Options. She likens infertility to an island, with neighborhoods such as fertility treatments, donor gametes, adoption, and living childfree.
Everyone gets off the island eventually, one way or another. What neighborhoods did you hang out in and what was your path off the island?
It’s an interesting question because I had the neighbourhood I lived in (and most of us only own one home), but many neighbourhoods that I visited due to friends or family members living in other spaces. Many of my childhood friends ended up going through infertility with me, and, of course, I met people along the way through Resolve and now blogs.
In addition, I think the way off the island is really an emotional journey. You can have children and still not resolve your infertility or you can stop the family building process and still not resolve your infertility. There is a saying with Resolve that children resolve childlessness, not infertility. And I find that to be very true.
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Tags : adoption, infertility, ivf
In MY day, when people found out they couldn’t have children, they surrendered their power to the men in the white coats. We allowed the men in white coats to poke and prod us without completely understanding the whys. We suffered alone, isolated. And we liked it! We loved it!
Today, wussy modern people confronted with infertility will have a much easier time of it, thanks to the recently released book, Navigating the Land of IF: Understanding Infertility and Exploring Your Options. The Land of IF is a guidebook for a place just off the mainland, a place where one in six people find themselves marooned. Author Melissa Ford, has explored every nook and cranny of this formerly insular jungle-of-a-place, and she indulged me in a few questions about her journey to parenthood and to authorhood. This is the first of four parts.
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You decided to become a tour guide for an island where no one wants to go. Huh?
Well, someone had to do it! Actually, there are a lot of really good books out there for infertility, but they were all missing items here and there. I wanted to cover the basics, but also make sure that all of the questions I still had after I put those books down were answered. Such as what happens if you hit a blood vessel during an injection? Or what are the various IVF protocols?
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Tags : adoption, infertility, ivf
Yale researchers may have solved a fundamental medical mystery: how bisphenol A (BPA), a ubiquitous plastics component, changes genetic chemistry and impairs fertility.
The Yale team’s findings, previewed earlier this month to the Endocrine Society, a 14,000-member scientific and medical professional organization devoted to hormone system research and treatment, have intensified scientists’ concern that exposure BPA, a synthetic estrogen that disrupts the endocrine system, may have grave consequences for human reproduction.
In an interview, study co-author Hugh S. Taylor, M.D., professor and chief of the reproductive endocrinology section at Yale University School of Medicine, said his team injected pregnant mice with BPA for just one week. After those mice, and a control group, gave birth, the scientists found that the genetic chemistry of female offspring exposed to BPA in the womb had been irrevocably altered.
A particular gene known as HOXA10, responsible for normal uterine development and fertility in both mice and humans, had been stripped of numerous so-called “methyl groups,” each composed of a single hydrogen atom and three carbon atoms.
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Tags : infertility, plastic, research
ROCHESTER, Minn. (AP) ?After packing their bags, Nicole Brueck and her husband, Aaron, waited for the phone call that they hoped would bring them closer to their dream.
For nearly a year, the Rochester couple had been working to adopt a child from Guatemala. And in preparing for that event, they had spent hours learning about the country’s culture and history, taking lessons in Spanish and preparing a home for the child they had yet to meet. They had also spent $10,000.
But when the call came, it brought not the news that they had been waiting for, but grief and despair. The country had shutdown its adoption program. The Brueck’s money, hopes and plans of nearly a year in the making had been dashed virtually in an instant.
Yet despite the emotional devastation the news brought her — “I was literally a pile, just a lump on my floor for two days” — Nicole wasn’t done in her efforts to adopt a child internationally. She and her husband would try again.
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Tags : adoption, infertility
You have probably heard that wearing boxer shorts can improve semen quality. This may help in a way as elevated body temperature can affect sperm count, but relying on the use of boxers to enhance sperm health is not really a very promising idea. Improving male fertility is actually a bit more complex, and it definitely needs more than just a change in undergarments.
Eat fruits and vegetables regularly. Studies have shown that men who ate more fruits and vegetables have better sperm quality compared to men who don’t. This has been attributed to the high antioxidant content of fruits and vegetables, which can reduce oxidative stress and consequently improve sperm count and motility.
Get regular exercise. Adopt a moderate-intensity fitness regimen to keep your body in healthy shape. While it is good to push yourself to exercise daily, it is not also advisable to go all the way with too intense workouts.
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Tags : fertility, male, sperm
Skipping one phase when treating infertility also cuts costs, study finds
FRIDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) — Among couples going to fertility clinics, pregnancy occurred more quickly — and for less money — when they took an accelerated route to in vitro fertilization, a new study has found.
The advantages came when the researchers eliminated one step in the fertility treatment — the gonadotropin-stimulated intrauterine insemination cycle. Gonadotropin is a follicle-stimulating hormone.
Working with couples at Boston IVF and Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, the researchers divided 503 couples into two groups. Women in one group underwent conventional treatment — three cycles of intrauterine insemination (IUI) using clomiphene citrate to stimulate ovulation, followed by three gonadotropin-stimulated IUI cycles, then up to six cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
IUI is a procedure in which a thin, flexible catheter is threaded through the cervix and used to inject washed sperm directly into the uterus. In IVF, egg and sperm are joined outside the uterus in a petri dish, and the fertilized egg is then placed into the uterus.
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Tags : infertility, IUI, ivf
