It’s easy to describe pregnancy: it occurs when a sperm fertilizes an egg. But the process that brings it about is not so simple. For a man to get his partner pregnant:

• He must produce a large number of healthy sperm and deliver them close to the woman’s cervix.
• The sperm must be active enough to reach the egg and then strong enough to penetrate the egg.

Infertility can result if there’s a hitch in sperm quality, production or delivery. People often assume that infertility is solely a woman’s problem. But male factors account for about 40 percent of infertility cases. Luckily, treatment can help a couple overcome male-factor infertility.

Treatments for male infertility

The right treatment will depend on what is causing infertility. Often surgery or medication may be tried first.

• • Varicocele (a varicose vein in the scrotum)
  • Blockage in the ducts that carry sperm
  • Structural defect present since birth or caused by infection or surgery

• Surgery can be done to fix common problems such as a:

Surgery can often be done using tiny incisions that cause only minimal pain and scarring.

• Medications may be used to treat some men. For example, hormones can be used to correct a low testosterone level. And antibiotics may help if infertility is caused by an infection.

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Tags : infertility, ivf, male

(CNN) — The average American woman can live long enough to celebrate her 80th birthday, so if a woman is able to become pregnant using in vitro fertilization with a donor egg at 56, she could still watch her child grow into an adult. But just because it’s possible, does that mean she should?

Some feel that having children after 45 is unfair because the parents might not live to see the kids become adults.

The death of 69-year-old Maria del Carmen Bousada of Spain, who used in vitro fertilization with a donor egg to have twin boys at 66, has the fertility treatment community bracing for a backlash. It could rival the fallout from octuplet mom Nadya Suleman — and it seems to have already started.

In a national online survey about fertility conducted in May by Johnson & Johnson’s Babycenter.com, 7 out of 10 moms who responded wanted tougher regulation laws for IVF treatments, and half of the 1,095 respondents thought it was bad for the children if a parent conceived past 45.

Fertility specialists understand those concerns, but they say it’s not that simple. Although it’s rare for anyone older than 55 to get the go-ahead for IVF, that guideline is peer-enforced rather than mandated, and decisions typically are made on a case-by-case basis.

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Tags : Conception, ivf

Seems like a terrible and heartless thing to ever say, right? The death of the oldest woman to give birth from in vitro fertilization (IVF) was announced this week; she was 69 years old and is survived by her twin sons. This naturally brings up a lot of questions I hear from women on a regular basis concerning IVF and assisted reproduction technologies (ART).

Women are waiting longer on average to begin having children in the last 20-30 years due to careers, education and other opportunities not traditionally available to women. As a result, more women are finding that natural conception has become increasingly difficult. On the opposite side of this coin is the “Octomom” fiasco in which a woman with no medical need for IVF was given a rather radical treatment resulting in the birth of 8 children.

Why the difficulty?

It is common knowledge that women over the age of 30 begin to experience marked declines in potential fertility. The primary reason for this decrease in fertility is the age of the eggs which her body is supporting to maturation.

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Tags : infertility, ivf

CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Fertility Centers of Illinois (FCI) is one of the first centers in the U.S., to offer a new and more advanced method of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), a technique that can detect and eliminate abnormalities and genetic disorders in children such as Down Syndrome, Turners Syndrome, Kleinfelters Syndrome and more. The new technology called Microarray, is far more thorough and accurate than previous methods of testing.

Used in conjunction with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), PGD is a cutting-edge technique that screens embryos for chromosomal abnormalities and genetic disorders prior to implantation. Such genetic conditions can interfere with Embryo Implantation, result in pregnancy loss, or the birth of a child with physical problems, developmental delay or mental retardation.

This new technology screens all 24 chromosomes and provides rapid results, eliminating the need to freeze embryos which can sometimes harm viability. Previous methods of PGD could only test a maximum of 9 – 12 chromosomes, leaving 12 or more untested. This caused 1 in 4 cases of aneuploidy – a chromosome abnormality - to be missed and if transferred, embryos that were unlikely to create healthy pregnancies.

Dr. Angeline Beltsos, reproductive endocrinologist with Fertility Centers of Illinois explains that this new PGD technology will provide better information to help select the best embryos for transfer during IVF. “The ability to test all 24 chromosomes and more accurately identify abnormal embryos may drastically improve pregnancy outcomes for ‘at risk’ couples, as well as significantly increase their odds of a healthy pregnancy and baby,” she adds.

Candidates for PGD testing include those experiencing recurrent miscarriage, previous unsuccessful IVF cycles, unexplained infertility, male factor infertility, or women of advanced maternal age.

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Tags : abnormalities, infertility, ivf

Simple test could tell women how likely they are to get pregnant, helping them decide whether or not it is worth undertaking IVF treatment The 30,000 women a year who undergo IVF may in the next few years be able to use a new blood test to tell them how likely they are to get pregnant, a conference heard today.

Scientists disclosed that they have discovered genetic markers in the blood which provide a fertility “fingerprint”. Although the research is still at an early stage, it could lead to women who are having fertility treatment being able to take a simple test that would help them decide whether or not it was worth undertaking treatment, which is expensive and both physically and emotionally demanding.

Researchers told the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) that the genetic markers showed activity patterns in more than 200 genes which were different in women whose IVF treatment had succeeded or failed.

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Tags : infertility, ivf

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

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

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