Breakthrough cure for infertility has little side effects

Scientists claim there’s a new fertility treatment that would cure impotence! It’s even way cheaper than IVF.  Over the years, In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) has been recognized as a procedure to help couples wish fertility problems deliver babies, but this new method is a radical departure.

The new method, In Vitro Maturation (IVM), which has passed pre-clinical testing, uses growth factors to enhance fertility. Its result shows improved egg quality and 50 percent increase in embryos with less use of drugs.

The scientists from Australia and Belgium reveal the chance of having a woman pregnant using the IVM technique is  more and cheaper.

While IVF involves women taking follicle stimulating hormones to stimulate the egg cell growth, IVM requires the egg being retrieved while they are still immature and brings it to maturity in cell culture in the lab.  With In Vitro Maturation, there’s minimal hormone stimulation.

According to a team of researchers led by Professor Robert Gilcrist of the University of New South Wales, Australia, IVM is an improved process to IVF. They added a mixture of a growth factor (cumulin) and cAMP-modulators to the egg cells help boost its quality.

The aim of the research has been to restore as far as possible the natural processes that occur during egg maturation.

“We have demonstrated that it is possible to improve egg quality and embryo yield with next to no drugs, using potent growth factors produced by the egg. If accepted into clinical practice, it will remove the need for a woman to inject herself with high doses of hormones.”

The medical breakthrough comes after 15 years of research and is currently awaiting US Food and Administration’s approval. Pigs were initially used to carry out the experiment before it was being tried on human.  It could give a woman the same chance of becoming pregnant as with hormone-stimulated IVF.

Researchers are currently carrying out safety precautions to ensure that the change in condition of the egg’s maturation using IVM doesn’t affect the long-term health of babies born.