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

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

Would-be parents who want to work with an egg donor, but who don’t have the $30,000 or so in-vitro fertilization costs, have some hope. Many fertility centers give their recipient patients the option of splitting the cost of receiving an egg donation with another couple.

“It’s really great for the younger patients who haven’t had a chance to really acquire any finances,” says Dr. Bruce Rose of Infertility Solutions, P.C., a clinic in Allentown, Pa.”It gives them the chance to have a child not otherwise possible.”

Sharing Means Saving
This process can save patients up to 50% of the costs in this step in the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process. In some cases what could typically cost $30,000 to $40,000 can come down in price to $15,000.

Other fertility treatment discounts are available, too. Dr. Carlos E. Soto-Albors, senior partner at the Northern California Fertility Medical Center in Roseville, Calif., is making IVF more affordable for patients by decreasing the cost each time they have the procedure, whether it is because they did not conceive the first time or because they want a second child.

“If they wait a year or two [to save additional monies for a second child] it will hurt their chance of getting pregnant,” he say.

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Tags : female, infertility, ivf

Many couples pay out-of-pocket for infertility diagnosis and treatment. This is because many employers still do not offer infertility benefits. Pending the type of fertility treatment rendered, costs may vary from a few hundred dollars to $15,000.00 or more.

According to Resolve, the national infertility association, only 15 states have laws requiring insurance coverage for infertility treatment. These laws are known as mandates. There are two types of mandates:

• Mandates to Offer: Mandates to offer require insurance companies to offer policies that cover infertility diagnosis and treatments. Employers must be made aware of these policies but are not required to include them in their employee benefits package.

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Tags : infertility, insurance

Teflon, pesticides, and plastics have all been linked to messing with male fertility. Now, not only are men in danger of extinction, but their ability to reproduce is seriously being compromised. In my artcle Men will become extinct: Appreciate them now, I reported about the fact that males genes will die out in the future. Before their genes die out their ability to reproduce may vanish.

A leading scientist has warned that chemicals found in many foods, cosmetics, and cleaning products are a real threat to male fertility. Professor Richard Sharpe, of the Medical Research Council, says that these hormone-disrupting chemicals are “feminizing” boys in the womb, leading to rising rates of birth defects, testicular cancer, and low sperm counts. ?

Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome
It is thought that all these conditions, collectively called Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome (TDS), are linked to disruption of the male sex hormone testosterone. Professor Sharpe concluded that exposure to a cocktail of hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment is likely to be at least partly to blame by blocking the action of testosterone in the womb. ?

Strange frogs and bears
The strongest evidence showing that exposure to environmental chemicals can lead to disruption of endocrine function comes from the bizarre changes seen in a number of wildlife species, such as male fish transforming into females; frogs developing a variety of defects like multiple testes or ovaries; and hermaphrodite bears, just to name a few.

We’re destroying ourselves

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Tags : infertility, male, plastic

Evi Shaw
Thursday, June 18, 2009

When we think of women’s health, our thoughts are automatically directed towards images of nurses and physicians, especially ob/gyns. However, there are also psychological approaches to this topic.

Many health concerns are best treated when physicians and mental health providers act together as a team.

I attended a workshop in Denver recently that was given by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH). It was taught by Jackie Irland, M.D., fellow, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and assistant professor of the same discipline at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Her co-instructor was Molly Delaney, doctor of psychology, ASCH-approved consultant, who is in private practice in Maine.

Some therapy goals for infertility problems can be to increase coping skills for physical, emotional and hormonal fluctuations, to stabilize the autonomic nervous system, to strengthen the ego, and to prepare for medical procedures.

Most of us have probably heard stories in which a couple tried hard to conceive a child, had fertility studies done, in vitro fertilization and so on. All this pain and expense. Once the couple relaxed and allowed things to happen naturally, they had a child.

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Tags : hypnosis, infertility