So the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s 63rd annual meeting has ended. I took a stab at giving you some of the higlights, but here’s an incomplete roundup of coverage elsewhere on the meeting.

While I was in another session on cryopreservation of eggs, embryos and the like, it looks like I missed some interesting imaging studies that someone posted on over at huliq.

I was around for the press briefing on Desvenlafaxine to treat the symptoms of menopause – mostly hot flushes. This is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRIs are usually used to treat depression) that Wyeth has been testing in hopes of regaining its former glory in the treatment of menopause after years of dwindling prospects over hormonal therapies. It was interesting, I thought, but something that they’ve been working on for a while. Some were concerned about suicidal thoughts – a side effect flagged in young people when they start the drug – but the data don’t currently indicate anything abnormal – and the study design only accepted women with clean bills of mental health. Lifesciencesworld.com picked up a presser on their blog.

Reuters story here

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Now, I love me some epigenetics. Feeling bad that I had to miss the Nova special last night called “The Ghost in our Genes.” I decided to sit in on a nurses session about epigenetics and assisted reproductive technologies.

Lee Fallon a former genetics counsellor and consultant made a very nice presentation employing the usual, though not unhelpful analogies, like the idea that epigenetics is akin to highlighting. If the genome is the book of human life, epigenetics provides the cells with context — instructions on how to read genes and how much or how little emphasis should be placed on certain genes in certain cell types.

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Reproduction was hard enough. So today, just to throw a kink in things, a major focus at ASRM’s 2007 annual meeting was contraception. I didn’t make it to many of the symposia on the topic — too busy with preimplantation genetic diagnositcs. Nevertheless few choice comments came from an engaging, though poorly attended late morning panel on the politics of contraception, something that is largely only an issue for christian dominated countries like the US.

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At ASRM George Daley gave this morning’s plenary lecture to a dense crowd. He talked about the growing relationship between embryonic stem cell research and reproductive medicine and discussed the promise of embryonic stem cell research for basic discovery and, cautiously, for human health. But he made a point about the many complaints often voiced about the fact that ‘no cures have come’ from embryonic stem cell research, flagging this year’s Nobel prize winning scientists for the development of knockout mice.

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Sherilyn Levy the Nurse in Charge at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Reproductive Medicine says that she knows what guys want. In ART, the woman’s job — from hormone injections, to harvesting, to implantation, and hopefully pregnancy and delivery — can be pretty harrowing. The man’s job is simple really, but Levy and a colleague Bonnie Campbell decided that B&W’s aging ‘men’s lounge’ an important part of most fertility procedures at the hospital, was due for an update.

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I’m reporting from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting this week, in Washington D.C. There are sure to be some controversial subjects discussed including the ethics and efficacy of prenatal genetic screening in assisted reproductive technology (ART), as well as a hot up and coming topic in the cryopreservation of eggs. In press conferences held this morning however, the interesting topic was a growing concern in ART, and one that has some controversial implications internationally. Timothy Hickman, medical director at Houston IVF in Texas, and others were discussing the justifications for transferring multiple embryos in older women.

The danger implicit in transferring, say six embryos as opposed to two, is generally multiple births, something that stands to threaten the health of older women. Nevertheless, the eggs of older women are sometimes of questionable quality, riddled by aneuploidy and other factors that enhance the likelihood for miscarriage and failed pregnancy.

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