Most of the criticism levelled at complementary therapies is based on the fact that a lot of them don't actually do anything. Techniques such as homeopathy and reflexology do not have a clinically proven mode of action and don't deliver any benefit beyond placebo. But at the same time, many would argue that this fact makes it perfectly acceptable for women who are desperate to conceive to use such therapies if they think they will help. After all, what's the harm?

But women who use alternative therapies may actually be damaging their chances of successfully conceiving through fertility treatment, according to Jacky Boivin of the Cardiff University. In a study of more than 800 Danish women embarking on IVF treatment, 45% of those who also took complementary therapies got pregnant within 12 months, compared with 66% for those who didn't. The implication is clear: complementary therapies, usually thought of as ultimately benign, can dent your chances of having a baby via IVF.

That's pretty striking. But the results call for closer analysis. First of all, what could the mechanism be? Boivin suggested that herbal supplements (which accounted for nearly 40% of complementary therapies in the study) might interfere with the hormone-altering drugs and other medications essential for successful IVF. Or perhaps the type of person who is interested in complementary medicine is not the type who will reliably self-administer all the right injections at exactly the right time.

But what about the most popular complementary therapy among the women in the study - reflexology? How can a glorified foot rub stop you conceiving a baby? The answer might be that women who use complementary treatments are not using them to help themselves get pregnant - they're doing it to try and cope with the psychological stress caused by their own infertility.

That leaves us with a chicken-and-egg situation. Are pregnancy rates lower because the women are using complementary therapies, or are the complementary therapies a reaction to greater stress and the need for more psychological relief? Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The best way to help these women might be to tall them to ditch the holistic massages and healing crystals, and instead turn to procedures that definitely do work, such as psychological counselling to cope with the stress and depression that can be engendered by infertility. In this way, infertile women might feel less burdened by the pressure to conceive, and in so doing, boost their chances of success.

Posted by Mike Hopkin at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Screening embryos might do more harm than good.

Dutch researchers have questioned the effectiveness of a technique that many fertility specialists believe improves the chances of pregnancy. Preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) harms the chances of motherhood for women older than 35, they claim.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 08:05 AM | Permalink

Technique raises hopes for infertile men.

Cloning might one day restore the fertility of men with severely low sperm counts, say researchers in the United States who have cloned mouse sperm and used it to create apparently healthy adult mice.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's expensive, there's no guarantee of success, and it seems that, for women of a certain age, it might just be better not to bother spending the money at all. IVF, at least using a woman's own eggs, should have an age limit of 44, some fertility experts are now claiming.

IVF is often used to help women the wrong side of 30 to overcome their declining fertility. But data on those receiving IVF in their 40s suggests that the rate of success diminishes effectively to zero beyond the mid-40s. Doctors led by Ronit Machtinger at Israel's Sheba Medical Center calculate that, for a sample of 154 IVF attempts carried out on women aged 45, less than 2% resulted in pregnancy, and two-thirds of pregnancies miscarried. For every successful pregnancy, almost half a million dollars had been spent by women in the sample group. Compare that with an average cost-per-pregnancy of $14,000 for women under 35.

A similar study at the University of New South Wales in Australia also concluded that 45 seems to be the cutoff point after which women should be advised not to even attempt IVF using their own eggs.

Sceptics of fertility treatment might argue that this is Mother Nature trying to tell us something. But that's not to say that older women can't become pregnant by IVF - it's just that they would be advised to use somebody else's eggs to do it. Britain's oldest mother became pregnant after receiving IVF treatment using donated eggs, and although doctors are reluctant to treat women who may not be likely to live to see their child grow up, there is currently no legal age limit for motherhood, artificial or otherwise.

Posted by Mike Hopkin at 03:50 PM | Permalink

Legal first means girl could one day give birth to her own half-sibling.

A seven-year-old girl in Canada might one day give birth to her genetic half-sibling. The girl's mother has donated her own eggs to give the child, who was born with a disease that affects her ovaries, the chance to have children of her own.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the dominant themes of clinical research is the issue of how to preserve the fertility of young women or girls facing cancer. At the moment, the best bet seems to be freezing eggs or ovarian tissue, as sadly the rigours of chemotherapy usually cause the ovaries to shut down completely. But a new way to protect ovaries from aggressive chemotherapy may be on the horizon, says Kate Stern of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne.

Stern told us about a pilot study in which she gave 18 female cancer patients a drug that temporarily and partially shuts the ovaries down, hopefully protecting them from the full onslaught of chemotherapy. The drug, called cetrorelix, calms the production of hormones that fuel ovarian function. Of 18 women given the drug, all but one had resumed normal menstruation a year after their chemotherapy, and many are hopeful that they will successfully have kids in future.

Stern's study was small and needs to be replicated in a proper clinical trial, but if it does work, the drug could offer a useful complement to egg freezing, and perhaps even supersede it entirely. After all, prevention is better than cure.

Posted by Mike Hopkin at 02:25 PM | Permalink

Baby is first to be born from eggs matured and frozen in the lab.

Doctors in Canada have announced the birth of the first baby to be created from an egg that was matured in a test tube and then frozen and thawed for later use. The method offers hope for women who fall victim to sudden ovarian failure or who cannot be given drugs that promote egg maturation in the ovaries themselves.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the time-honoured rituals of big conferences is trawling the marketing booths in the exhibition hall looking for decent handouts (ideally edible ones). This year's top freebie takes the meeting's human reproduction theme to a quite ridiculous extreme, in the form of 'sperm drinks' (Irish cream liquer, since you asked), lovingly presented in a plastic container shaped like a wiggly egg-seeking gamete. After gingerly opening one and having a taste, several female members of the press room commented that it's not often you come to an embryology conference and find the ideal hen night accessory...

Posted by Mike Hopkin at 05:09 PM | Permalink

One of the pitfalls of having IVF is that you're likely to end up with more than you bargained for - even when only one embryo is implanted, the likelihood of having identical twins runs at roughly seven times that for natural births. Through some ingenious time-lapse film-making, Dianna Payne of the Mio Fertility Clinic in Yonago, Japan, has now shown us how it happens.

She set up a microscope and video camera to document the first few hours and days of a growing test-tube embryo's life. As these still images from the movei show, the embryo on the bottom left clearly features not one, but two 'inner cell masses' - the ball of cells that ultimately becomes a person. PAyne's film showed how, in some cases, the cavity that makes up the rest of the 'blastocoele' sometimes collapses and reforms, occasionally transferring some cells to the opposite side of the embryo and resulting in two cell masses, which then go on to become identical twins.

Payne's work used surplus embryos donated to research. But it has raised hopes that one day, all mothers undergoing IVF could have their embryos examined to check for this process before the embryo is transferred to the womb. Thus couples could avoid having twins... unless they really want them, of course.

Posted by Mike Hopkin at 04:48 PM | Permalink

The first big story of the meeting is the news that doctors can now take and freeze eggs from girls as young as five, preserving their fertility in the event that they suffer childhood cancers. The treatment offers the potential to store eggs from kids facing aggressive chemotherapy that is likely to leave them sterile in later life.

Many post-pubertal women already freeze eggs, sometimes because they have cancer, in other cases simply because they want to delay having children until later in life. But the outlook for young children diagnosed with cancer was very bleak, because it was not thought that mature eggs could be obtained from such young individuals. The only alternative - freezing the entire ovarian cortex, which contains egg-producing follicles - has a much lower success rate.

But now researchers led by Ariel Revel of Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem have shown that follicles can be obtained from the embryonic tissue of girls as young as five. When treated with the right cocktail of hormones these can be coaxed into developing into mature eggs in the test tube - these eggs can then be frozen for later use.

Reaction to the news has been mixed - even the headline of the British sunday paper story that broke the news seemed to imply some ethical reservations. But overall the reaction has been positive - after all, despite the severity of many childhood cancers, survival rates hover between 70% and 90%, and anything that gives these kids a shot at one day becoming parents must surely be welcomed.

Posted by Mike Hopkin at 01:40 PM | Permalink

Michael Hopkin is blogging at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon, France, from 1-4 July. Read his updates here.

Posted by Nicola Jones at 09:53 AM | Permalink

Work with unfertilized eggs could provide a way around restrictions on embryo experiments.

Human embryonic stem-cell lines have been successfully produced without using fertilized eggs. The researchers responsible work in Italy, which has some of the most restrictive embryo-research laws in the world. They hope the work will be welcomed as an ethically acceptable source of stem cells, as it does not involve destroying a viable embryo.

Read more here

Posted by Jo Marchant at 04:00 PM | Permalink

Technological advance could help infertile people to have children.

Stem cells from a mouse embryo have been coaxed into producing both eggs and sperm in the same dish. The eggs and sperm are the most mature yet grown in the lab, and the advance brings researchers closer to their ultimate aim: producing human eggs and sperm from adult body cells so that infertile men and women can have their own children.

Read more here

Posted by Jo Marchant at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Successful sheep trial raises hopes for human procedure.

Womb transplants in humans should be possible within five years, say scientists in Sweden who have successfully transplanted uteruses in sheep. The procedure would allow women who have functioning ovaries but no womb to carry their own children, and the researchers say they have already been contacted by hundreds of women who are interested in having such a transplant.

Read more here

Posted by Michael Hopkin at 05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Nearly every talk I've attended at this conference has included at least one slide showing a smiling bouncing baby, to remind us all why ultimately we're here, I guess.

Continue reading "ESHRE: Cutest baby pic" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I went to a fascinating session on pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) this morning. That's where a cell is taken from the early embryo during IVF, and screened for chromosomal abnormalities before it is implanted into the mother.

Continue reading "ESHRE: To screen or not to screen?" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Stress, diet and exercise can dent women’s reproductive capacity.

A combination of stress, diet and exercise can dramatically affect female fertility, research on monkeys suggests. Although stress is known to reduce fertility, researchers now warn that if a woman is also dieting and exercising, the effect could be many times greater.

Read more here

Posted by Michael Hopkin at 05:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Just heard some results that could mean good news for male cancer patients. Alon Carmely from Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, says he's hopeful that a drug that enhances the immune system could help protect men's testes from the effects of chemotherapy.

Continue reading "ESHRE: Protecting fertility in cancer patients" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

As well as the research presentations, there are also a huge number of company stalls here, mainly medical technology companies hoping to tempt fertility doctors with their latest equipment.

Continue reading "ESHRE: Microscopes, coffee and football" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 04:12 PM | Permalink

A big question researchers here are asking is whether babies born after IVF are as healthy as those conceived naturally.

Continue reading "ESHRE: The risks of IVF" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I had dinner last night with among others Sean Tipton, press officer for ESHRE's American rival, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). He's here to persuade delegates to attend the ASRM's own meeting, to be held in New Orleans in October.

Continue reading "ESHRE: Gossip from the US" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 09:27 AM | Permalink

Looking at the research that's being presented here, one of the first things to strike me is the number of papers from Italian teams trying to get round their country's restrictions on the use of in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Continue reading "ESHRE: Getting round Italy's law" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 03:21 PM | Permalink

Hello! I'm Jo Marchant, Nature's news editor, and I'm here in Prague for the 22nd annual meeting of ESHRE, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. It's a huge and wide-ranging meeting -- I'm told there are over 6000 delegates here, including infertility specialists, embryologists, geneticists, stem cell scientists and developmental biologists.

Continue reading "ESHRE: All about stem cells" »

Posted by Jo Marchant at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

New tests could make it easier to detect IVF embryos at risk of genetic disease.

A way of vastly amplifying the genome of a single cell is allowing unprecedented insights into the potential of embryos created during fertility treatment. Embryos can already be checked for some genetic abnormalities, but tests are limited by the tiny amount of DNA in a single cell removed from the embryo.

Read more here

Posted by Nicola Jones at 03:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)