How does being overweight affect fertility?

The Conversation: The proportion of Australians who are overweight or obese is at an all-time high. We know excess weight is linked to many adverse health consequences, but there is now growing understanding that it also affects fertility. A fine hormonal balance regulates the menstrual cycle. Overweight and obese women have higher levels of a hormone called leptin, which is produced in fatty tissue. This can disrupt the hormone balance and lead to reduced fertility.

Couples with obesity may take longer to achieve pregnancy, study suggests

NIH: Couples in which both partners are obese may take from 55 to 59 percent longer to achieve pregnancy, compared to their normal weight counterparts, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The findings appear online in Human Reproduction. “A lot of studies on fertility and body composition have focused on the female partner, but our findings underscore the importance of including both partners,” said Rajeshwari Sundaram, Ph.D., a senior investigator in the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “Our results also indicate that fertility specialists may want to consider couples’ body compositions when counseling patients.”

Most men don’t realise age is a factor in their fertility too

TheConversation: Most people want to have children sometime in their life and expect this will happen when the time is right for them. In Australia, the “right” time to have a first child has shifted from being in the mid-twenties a few decades ago to around 30 today. In 1991, less than a quarter (23%) of women having their first child were over the age of 30. In 2012 this had risen to more than half (55%). Age has a significant impact on fertility and the chance of having a healthy baby. In women, fertility starts to decline slowly in their early thirties and this decline speeds up after 35. The monthly chance of pregnancy for couples in which the woman is 35 or younger is about 20%, and 80-90% achieve a pregnancy within 12 months. By age 40, the monthly chance has dropped to 5% and only 50% of couples conceive within 12 months.

Could Zika Virus Have Lasting Impact on Male Fertility?

NIH: Recent research has shown that the mosquito-borne Zika virus has the potential to cause serious health problems, including severe birth defects in humans. But the damaging effects of Zika might not end there: results of a new mouse study show that the virus may also have an unexpected negative—and possibly long-lasting—impact on male fertility. In work published in the journal Nature, an NIH-funded research team found that Zika infections can persist for many weeks in the reproductive systems of male mice [1].

Are plastics making men infertile?

TheConversation: Recent research has reignited concerns that exposure to chemicals from plastics might be to blame for low sperm counts in young men. I share the concerns about the high prevalence of low sperm counts (one in six young men), and my research is directed at trying to identify what causes it. But whether plastics are to blame isn’t a simple matter.

New mechanism for male infertility discovered

Stockholm: A new study led from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet links male infertility to autoimmune prostatic inflammation. The findings are published in the journal  Science Translational Medicine . Involuntary childlessness is common, and in half of all cases attributable to infertility in the man. Although male infertility has many possible causes, it often remains unexplained. In the present study, the researchers have discovered a reason for reduced fertility in people with autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 1 (APS1), which increases the risk of developing autoimmune disease (caused by the immune system attacking and damaging healthy cells) and which is often used as a model for autoimmune disease in general.

New clues in mice link cholesterol to fertility

Saint-Louis: Whether made by the body or ingested through diet, cholesterol plays a vital role in cells. Cholesterol also is a building block of steroids and hormones, including those that trigger puberty and support pregnancy. A new study implicates a surprising regulator of cholesterol in cells’ ability to make these hormones, especially in tissues associated with fertility, such as the ovaries.

IVF invention bringing new hope to families

Adelaide: Couples undergoing IVF, where the female partner is 25-41, who have had at least two embryo transfers without implantation, poor embryo development or at least one miscarriage, are able to participate in the BlastGen trial. For more information, contact Fertility SA on 8100 2900. Women who have been struggling to start a family for years are finally getting pregnant thanks to a world first in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment, developed by researchers at the University of Adelaide.

Woman gives birth using ovaries she had frozen as a child

NHS: The UK papers today welcome news of a world first in fertility treatment. As The Guardian concisely summarises: "A young woman in Belgium has become the first to give birth to a healthy baby after having her fertility restored by a transplant of ovarian tissue that was removed and frozen when she was a child". The woman was born with sickle cell anaemia, a serious inherited blood disorder where the red blood cells, which carry oxygen around the body, develop abnormally. This can cause severe pain and organ damage. Due to the severity of her condition, a decision was taken to perform a stem cell transplant.

House prices are posing a serious threat to the fertility of Generation Y

UNSW: Surging house prices combined with radical social and demographic change are posing a serious threat to the fertility of Generation Y, demographer and social researcher Mark McCrindle said. “This generation can expect to pay up to 10 times the average annual full time earnings for a house in Sydney, double the 1975 cost in real terms, causing many couples to delay having children while they save to purchase a property,”.

Do too many couples expect IVF to solve their fertility problems?

UNSW: While assisted reproductive technology has solved fertility problems for many people, there’s often little fertility specialists can offer a woman much over 40, apart from egg donation, writes William Ledger. All too frequently I am faced with breaking bad news to disappointed couples in their early forties who expected IVF to solve their fertility problems. The sad truth is that there’s often little I can offer if the woman is much over 40, apart from egg donation from a younger sibling, friend or donor.

Predicting the end of fertility for women after pediatric cancer

INSERM: Researchers from the Paris Public Hospitals (AP-HP), Inserm, the Gustave Roussy and Curie Institutes, and Oscar Lambret Cancer Centre, coordinated by Dr Cécile Thomas-Teinturier of the Paediatric Endocrinology Service at Bicêtre Hospital, have studied the impact of certain therapeutic agents on the fertility of women who have been cured of a paediatric cancer. This research, carried out with support from the French National Cancer League, is published in the journal Human Reproduction on 23 March 2015.

Spontaneous or planned sex: which is better (for pregnancy)?

Cochrane: Timed intercourse may improve pregnancy rates compared to intercourse without ovulation prediction, but nothing is sure. Many couples find it difficult to achieve a pregnancy and have concerns about their fertility. Each cycle, a woman is fertile from approximately five days before ovulation until several hours after ovulation, due to limited survival times of the sperm and egg. Therefore, prospectively identifying this fertile period of a woman's menstrual cycle, to guide timing of intercourse, may improve conception rates.