Egg donation and "just in case" cryopreservation
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- Published on Thursday, 01 August 2013 13:58
The results of several studies answering why women become egg donors and their relation to the freezing of their own biological material were presented at the last conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology ESHRE.
Examining reasons of eggs donation, the researchers came to the conclusion that determining factors were the country of residence and age of the donor. Thus, "female donors after 30 years are guided mainly by altruistic motives, while more young ladies don’t hide their material interest in the procedure."
The second, equally important factor, was the donor’s country of residence: according to Professor of Bioethics Institute of Ghent (
Once again about the legitimacy of gender selection in IVF
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- Published on Tuesday, 30 July 2013 12:47
Once again the topic of gender selection during the IVF has been risen. After one of the Spanish clinics started collecting signatures for the lifting of the ban on gender selection, and the doctor in
Let me remind you that it’s the pre-implantation diagnostic (PGD), that allows to examine the material obtained in the presence of the defective gene, and incidentally to determine the gender of the fetus and with the highest likelihood. So, if we consider the laws of different countries of the world, they can be divided into 3 groups. In the first (like
More affordable method of PGD has been tested
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- Published on Friday, 26 July 2013 13:36
The first "test-tube" child who had passed a new, more accessible method of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was born in the
As a result of a standard IVF procedure thirteen embryos had been received, the cells of which were sent to
Can the ovarian reserve be restored?
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- Published on Monday, 29 July 2013 09:46
An interesting discovery was made by scientists at the Harvard Medical School, who had denied widespread opinion that a woman's ovarian reserve is non-renewable. The researchers have found oogonia (progenitors of oocytes) first in the ovaries of mice and then of adult women. Modern technologies allowed to count the number of divisions, which the cell had passed through: it was sufficient to measure the length of oogonias’ telomeres (end sections of DNA). The length of telomeres clearly shows that the studied cells are the product of successive division of oogonia, which proves that the cells continue to divide in the ovary during the reproductive period of a woman.
It is necessary to mention once again about a very common misbelief. There is a common idea that a woman has only 350-400 eggs for the whole life, so after multifollicular ovarian stimulation, required for IVF, almost 5% of all ovarian reserve "is taken away". In fact, the amount of potential eggs is much more than 400. The reserve of follicles, from which an egg “grows up” later, starts to form at the girl’s organism while being in the womb, and amounts of germ cells in the beginning is about 6-7 million.
The crisis of male fertility
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- Published on Wednesday, 24 July 2013 13:26
Here is the latest news from the world of male fertility: in a recent report of the
Scientists are concerned that only few people are trying to solve this problem: in 2011 there were 191,205 men and women diagnosed with infertility, but only 86,433 of them sought treatment. The government partially subsidizes the treatment of infertile couples by IVF: more than 40,000 couples received subsidies in 2011. Professor Lee said: "Although there are limited ways to treat male infertility, in vitro fertilization can become the most effective. If couples can’t get a desirable child for a year, they should consult their physicians. "