Hot MedFax

If you are ever thinking of becoming pregnant, you might not want to take the pill. That's because a new study has found that not only does it shrink your ovaries, it also reduces the number of eggs you will have for the rest of your life. According to bioscience.com, the birth control pill significantly affects ovarian reserve— or the number of immature eggs in a woman’s ovaries— which can be a predictor of future fertility. A team in Denmark, who reported this to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting last month, said that two markers for ovarian reserve are markedly suppressed after prolonged birth control pill use, and ovaries are also markedly shrunken after prolonged pill use. “During the last three years we have counseled 900 women, and 300 men, about their ability to conceive naturally,” team leader Kathrine Birch Petersen told Bioscience Technology via email. “The proportion of oral contraceptive users was 28 percent. We we...

Obese women have to w o rry about heart disease and diabetes and cancer.  Now a new study has found that   in vitro fertilization   (IVF) probably won't work for them either. That's because they need a bigger dose of hormones to account for their weight.   Obese women may need a different dose of medication than normal weight women in order to successfully have their eggs harvested for IVF procedures, according to newswise.com. But that comes with a caution, at least from me, who is not a medical person but who developed breast cancer after four IVFs, because, I'm convinced, of the hormones. If you get a bigger dose, does that increase your chances of cancer?  This has been studied, and is starting to appear true, but because fertility treatments are such a money-maker (my guess), the issue hasn't been addressed loudly enough. (I'd think it was just me, my bad luck, except many of my friends who also did IVF have breast cancer, too.) But, back to the s...

Interesting story today at smartplanet.com.   Designer babies . It's not what you think.  Or maybe it is.  But British researchers have found a way to make a baby using three people.  It's not to make sure the baby has blond hair and blue eyes, and is a girl, with a 150 IQ, but to provide additional genes to prevent "debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial disease." According to David Worthington, mitochondria are the parts of cells known as 'power stations' because they provide energy.  "Diseased mitochondria leaves people weak and can cause blindness, heart failure and death," he writes. This disorder affects one in every 6,500 babies in the UK, according to the BBC. The way it works is through an in-vitro fertilization procedure.  Doctors extract eggs from the mother and sperm from the father, then combine them in the lab with a third person's disease-free mitochrondria.  I remember talk about something like this when I was tryi...