New Technique Helps Preserve Fertility In Cancer Patients
Researchers in Germany announced Monday the discovery of a new technique that may help cancer patients preserve their fertility prior to starting treatments such as chemotherapy, which can sometimes result in infertility.
Many women who are newly-diagnosed with cancer freeze some of their eggs, a process that can take up to six weeks, in an effort to preserve their post-treatment fertility. But if the diagnosis comes at the beginning of their menstrual cycle, many are not able to delay chemotherapy and preserve their eggs.
"Depending on what phase of her menstrual cycle is in when she receives a cancer diagnoses, it can take between two and six weeks to start ovarian stimulation and collect (eggs)," Michael Von Wolf, a researcher at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
"Two weeks is an acceptable amount of time in many diseases to wait before starting a cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, but three to six weeks is far too long."
During the study, researchers wanted determine if they could stop the menstrual cycle of 40 women during what is known as the luteal phase, the part of the cycle from ovulation to the start of the next menstruation, and then stimulate the follicles as if it were earlier in the cycle.
The researchers gave each woman a GnRH-antagonist drug that blocked production of a hormone critical to the luteal phase, and then administered a standard follicle-stimulating hormone.
Von Wolff said that fertility experts had only given the follicle-stimulating drug at the beginning of a woman’s cycle, but doctors can now administer them later on if required.
"It is not new drugs," he said.
"Everybody can do it."
The researchers found the technique had stimulated the ovaries in about 12 days, producing 10 eggs. The women who received the drugs earlier in their cycles had their ovaries stimulated in just over 10 days, producing 13 eggs, Von Wolff said. Roughly the same percentage of eggs were viable in both groups.
Women at several centers in Germany, Switzerland and Austria now have access to the technique, and Von Wolff hopes that even more countries will provide it as doctors learn about the procedure.
"I am desperately working to try to have everybody who does fertility to know about it," he told Reuters.
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