B5 More on Controlling Fertility (page 66) Flashcards
Scientific advances in understanding fertility have led to many intertile women being helped with what?
to have a baby.
Can hormones be used to increase fertility?
yes
Some women have levels of FSH (folical-stimulating hormone) that are too low to cause their eggs to mature, what do this mean?
This means that no eggs are released and the women can’t get pregnant.
How can women with low FSH (folical-stimulating hormone) be helped to stimulate ovulation (an egg to mature and release from the ovaries)?
The hormones FSH (folical-stimulating Hormone) and LH (luteinising Hormone) can be given to women in a fertility drug to stimulate ovulation.
What are the Pros of FSH and LH fertility drug?
it helps a lot of women get pregnant when previously they couldn’t.
What are the Cons of FSH and LH fertility drugs?
It doesn’t always work - some women may have to do it many times, which can be expensive.
Too many eggs could be stimulated, resulting in unexpected multiple pregnancies (twins, triplets, etc).
If a woman cannot get pregnant using medication, what else ay she choose to try?
IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
What do IVF (Invitro fertilsation) involve?
IVF involves collecting eggs from the woman’s ovaries ad fertilising them in a lab using a man’s sperm.
IVF treatment can also involve a technique called ICSI (Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection), what is this?
where the sperm is injected directly into an egg. It’s useful if the man has a very low sperm count.
(very low sperm count means the man has fewer than 15 million sperm per millilitre of semem, which can make it more difficult to conceive naturally, although pregnancies can still occur).
What happens in the lab after the fertilised eggs have occured?
The fertilised eggs are then grown into embryos in a laboratory incubator.
What happens once the embryos are tiny balls of cells from the laboratory incubator?
one or two of them are transferred to the woman’s uterus to improve the chance of pregnancy.
Before egg collection, FSH and LH are given to do what?
to stimulate several eggs to mature (so more than one egg can be collected.
What are the PROS of IVF/ICSI?
(IVF - In vitro fertilisation/ICSI Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection)
Fertility treatment can give an infertile couples a child.
What are the CONS of IVF/ICSI?
(IVF- In vitro fertilisation/ICSI intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection)
Multiple births can happen if more than one embryo grows into a baby - these are risky for the mother and babies (there’s a higher risk of miscarriage, stillbirth…).
The success rate of IVF is low - the average success rate in the UK is about 26%. This makes the process incredibly stressful and often upsetting, especially if it ends in multiple failures.
As well as being emotionally stressful, the process is also physically stressful for the woman, some women have a strong reaction to the hormones - e.g. abdominal pain, vomiting, dehydration.
Over the years, IVF have progressed and advanced in microscope techniques, how do this help?
it has helped to improve the techniques (and therefore the success rate) of IVF. Specialised micro-tools have been developed to use on the eggs and sperm under the microscope.
They’re also used to remove single cells from the embryo for genetic testing (to check that it is healthy - see page 74.
More recently, the development of time-lapse imaging (using a microscope and camera built into the incubator) means that the growth of the embryos can be continuously monitored to help identify those that are more likely to result in a successful pregnancy.
