A healthy 20-year-old woman who is trying to get pregnant has a 20% chance of conceiving each month, but by age 40, that rate drops to less than 5%.

Egg freezing has been viewed as one of the best fertility options available to women.  Women in their late 20s or early 30s who do not anticipate starting a family before their mid-30s will oftentimes go through a process to extract and freeze their healthy eggs, and have those eggs fertilized and implanted years later.

Dr. Dan Gelhbach offers egg freezing as an effective choice for fertility preservation.

Fertility Preservation Research Uncovers a New Discovery

Women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have, but new research by reproductive biologist Jonathan Tilly and his colleagues could circumvent this limitation. In 2004, Tilly’s team discovered the existence of egg precursor cells (EggPC) in the outer cortex of mice ovaries. These cells, they discovered, could grow into mature eggs that could become fertilized and develop into healthy baby mice.  In 2012, they replicated the results in humans by extracting women’s EggPC cells and then reintroducing them into the central part of the ovary, where they can develop into mature eggs.

If successful, this treatment could have a positive impact on fertility treatments and fertility preservation, with the most obvious benefit being to help women with low egg reserve produce more eggs during an IVF cycle, thereby increasing the chance for success.

While this is exciting news, OvaPrime, if successful, won’t be a cure-all for fertility problems.  Diminished egg reserve is a big problem for women trying to conceive after the age of 35, but it isn’t the only problem.  The health of the eggs that are produced must also be taken into consideration; if an egg is chromosomally abnormal, it doesn’t have a good chance of developing into a healthy baby.

Proven Effective, Egg Freezing Has Led to Thousands of Healthy Births

The OvaPrime fertility treatment certainly has the potential to be a game changer in fertility preservation, but it may take years before there is enough data to make a final judgment.  The first commercial offerings to patients are still pending.

In the meantime, traditional fertility services, such as intrauterine insemination, IUI and IVF procedures performed by Midwest Reproductive Center, offer your best choice for conceiving children.  Midwest Reproductive Center provides cutting-edge, comprehensive care. Dr. Gehlbach has years of proven experience diagnosing and treating both male and female infertility.

If you are having trouble conceiving, contact Midwest Reproductive Center today to make an appointment for a complete fertility evaluation.