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Counselling helps “perfectionist” women regain their fertility and become pregnant, US researchers say. They found cognitive behaviour therapy alone was enough to help some women who had stopped having periods and ovulating to regain their fertility. The therapy is usually used to treat people with depression.

A European fertility conference in Prague heard a build-up of stress can play a major role in preventing a woman from ovulating. But sometimes the effect can build up gradually in a subtle way.

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) can counter this by helping women to “make molehills out of mountains", the researchers said. Many of the women seen by the team were perfectionists - whether they had high-powered jobs or stayed at home - leading to high levels of stress.

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A drug which may encourage embryos to implant in the womb has shown encouraging results in early trials - producing babies for women who had endured repeated IVF failures.
The drug, LIF, will now move to wider trials before it is offered routinely to women.

Fertility treatment is successful in fewer than half of all couples who try them, even after repeated attempts. Many of these failures cannot be properly explained, although doctors suspect that in some cases, the fertilised embryo fails to implant correctly in the wall of the womb after it is transferred back by doctors.

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The public is to be asked if embryo screening should be extended to check for faulty genes which are not guaranteed to cause disease.
Embryos are now screened for inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis. But the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is asking if embryos should also be checked for genes linked to cancer and Alzheimer’s.

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A test is being launched in January which should be able to predict how many viable eggs a woman has left. Doctors and chemists are expected to offer the test which measures levels of three hormones in the blood to spot when menopause is imminent. The kit, developed by Professor Bill Ledger of Sheffield University, is being made by Biofusion Plc. Experts praised the test but warned women that other factors could also hamper fertility.

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Recent advances in sperm research using GFP could potentially help fertility experts explain the many thousands of cases every year, of couples who are diagnosed with unexplained infertility.

A technique which makes sperm glow green could aid this research into infertility, say scientists.
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Scientists have identified a protein essential for human sperm to fuse to an egg, which could lead to new methods of treating infertility.
The Japanese team has named the protein Izumo, after a Japanese shrine dedicated to marriage.

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DNA damage increases the risk of infertility. Scientists have developed a machine to separate out healthy sperm from that which is damaged and unlikely to be of use in IVF.

The shoebox-sized device is based on the principle that the sperm with the most negatively charged membranes are likely to have the least DNA damage.

It filters out sperm with a type of DNA damage linked to infertility and a raised risk of childhood cancers. Details of the Australian invention are published by New Scientist magazine.

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A woman whose husband died two and a half years ago has given birth to his daughter after IVF treatment. Diana Scott, 44, from Chippenham, Wiltshire, had 6lb baby girl Grace in September of this year in a Bath hospital.

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Fertility treatment has tended to rely on freezing embryos. The prospect of women routinely freezing unfertilised eggs for IVF has moved a step closer after research.

Thirteen children were born after 68 couples underwent treatment by Italian doctors who froze unfertilised eggs. Egg freezing is not new but doctors have struggled to achieve live births and tend to rely on freezing embryos as eggs are more vulnerable. The team from Bologna’s Tecnobios Procreazione now wants to improve the number of eggs which survive freezing.

The team froze 737 unfertilized eggs using the same method of slow freezing used during the cold storage of embryos. But only 37% of the eggs survived the process of freezing and thawing as unfertilized eggs are vulnerable to ice formation.

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Extreme exercise can stop a woman’s periods

Injections of a hormone made by fat cells can jump-start an idling reproductive system, research shows. Twice-daily injections of leptin restored menstruation in female athletes who had become so lean that their periods had stopped. The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center team said the injections might also prevent bone loss and treat the eating disorder anorexia nervosa.

Their findings are reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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New fertility treatment ‘closer’

Fertility treatment has tended to rely on freezing embryos. The prospect of women routinely freezing unfertilised eggs for IVF has moved a step closer after research.
Thirteen children were born after 68 couples underwent treatment by Italian doctors who froze unfertilised eggs.

Egg freezing is not new but doctors have struggled to achieve live births and tend to rely on freezing embryos as eggs are more vulnerable. The team from Bologna’s Tecnobios Procreazione now wants to improve the number of eggs which survive freezing. The team froze 737 unfertilized eggs using the same method of slow freezing used during the cold storage of embryos but only 37% of the eggs survived the process of freezing and thawing as unfertilized eggs are vulnerable to ice formation.

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