Predicting Menopause
According to recent findings, Researchers now claim that they may be able to predict when the ovarian time clock will wind down!
The number of eggs as they are commonly known, left in a woman's ovaries are like grains of sand in an hourglass, sipping away slowly into the bottom receptacle and as such slowly ticking the hours away, on her biological time piece.
While it is impossible to actually count the number of eggs in an ovary, the volume of the ovarian content can! According to British researchers, there is direct similarity between the two, and that by measuring the ovarian volume, using transvaginal ultrasound, doctors will be able to predict to a large degree of accuracy, when menopause will set in and as well predict the number of fertile years a woman has left.
As reported by the research authors, This information will spark off a revolutionary way in which women looking for assisted reproductive technologies are cared for,including those who were treated as children for cancer as well as women wanting to put off begining a family for later.
Though this information is still in need of validation in clinical circles, its benefit is most likely to begin with women who are beign treated for cancer and women attending fertility clinics as reported by Tom kelsey, co-author of the study in the june edition of the human Reproduction Journal.
"If women looking for some sort of assisted conception and their physicians know that they've got a long time till menopause, then you could plan for a range of treatments," said Kelsey, who is a senior research fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "If you knew menopause was likely in four to five years, you'd plan a different set of IVF [in vitro fertilization] treatments."
Other schools of thought, however, reiterate that the findings should be treated with caution.
"Should a young woman who is 30 years old go for a test to figure out whether she's got three, five or 10 years left on her fertility? Should she make career decisions and life decisions? Are these data good enough to make those determinations?" asked Dr. Alan Copperman, director of reproductive medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. "The answer is obviously no to all of those questions. The predictive value of this test is not good enough to go and tell someone to change their life."
As reported in the article, eggs form in a female's ovary while she is still in the womb, reaching a peak of several millions halfway through gestation and then comes the anticlimax and a continous decline. At birth, the eggs are a several hundred thousand, and, at the begining of menstruation about 300,000. A woman is said to have about 25,000 eggs left at age 37, and only about 1000 at menopause.
The reduction in the egg threshold is directly proportionate to when menopause sets in, as widely believed.Menopause sets in when the number of eggs reach a critically low threshold!
The Authors of this study measured ovarian volume using transvaginal ultrasound, and looked at the relationship between ovarian volume, Ovaries were found to shrink as a woman ages and so does the number of eggs. They then applied mathematical and computer models to predict menopause.The study authors are currently negotiating with a medical school to set up clinical trials which will follow women to find out if their predictions are indeed accurate.
While these authors have come up with a tool to potentially help women plan their lives, a second study in the same issue of Human Reproduction warned that women might not want to leave it too late.
Assisted reproductive technology (ART) could not be relied upon to fully compensate for lack of natural fertility after the age of 35, the article stated.
The authors used a computer simulation model to determine that the overall success rate of assisted reproductive technology would be 30 percent for those attempting to get pregnant from age 30, 24 percent for those trying from age 35, and 17 percent from age 40.
This information contained in this page is credited to:
Tom Kelsey, Ph.D., senior research fellow, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland;
Alan Copperman, M.D., director, reproductive medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York; June 17, 2004, Human Reproduction.
