By Rev. Megan Lloyd Joiner
As the spring thaw finally comes to my home in New England, I am making preparations for Easter celebrations and Passover Seders. I am watching with baited breath as the daffodils emerge, and I am thinking …
Month: March 2013
Spring Rejuvenation
by Ellen Glazer, L.C.S.W.
Spring may feel like a time of renewal and hope for many, but poses special challenges for individuals who are trying to conceive, and can’t. A leading therapist in the field gives concrete advise to those in …
FDA Warns Sexual Enhancement Supplements Contain Hidden Drugs
The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers Thursday that several supplements advertised as sexual enhancements contain hidden drugs.
March Madness Signals More Vasectomies
March Madness is here, and a Cape Cod, Mass., clinic is giving guys the perfect excuse to veg out on the couch: A vasectomy. They’ll even throw in a free pizza.
Acupuncture, Stress and IVF
Can acupuncture and IVF go hand in hand? Sandy Goodman MD of Reproductive Medicine Group, Florida and Kym Caporale, L.Ac discuss stress reduction, acupuncture and IVF in this short, interactive video, sponsored by Attain Fertility …
Can environmental contaminants cause lower sperm count?
The amount of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) that mothers had in their blood during pregnancyaffected their sons’ semen quality at 20 years old. These findings appear in a recent study from Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark, in which the Norwegian Institute of Public Healthparticipated.
Researchers had proposed hypotheses that increasing exposure to hormone-disrupting substances in the environment may be a contributory factor to reduced sperm quality. Therefore this study was initiated and found the following:
- The sons of mothers with the highest concentrations of PFOA in the bloodduring pregnancy had a lower sperm concentration and total sperm count than the sons of mothers with the lowest PFOA levels.
- A positive association was also found between PFOA exposure before birth and elevated levels of luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) in the sons’ blood. Read full article.
Follicle count could predict menopause
VANDERBILT (US) —Scientists have found a potential way to determine the start of menopause—findings that could lead to better fertility assessment and insight into disease risk.
The researchers examined the relationship between antral follicle count (AFC)—the number of early and potentially egg-producing follicles in the ovaries (as seen on ultrasound)—and the onset of natural menopause, which is the permanent end to ovarian egg production.
Melissa Wellons, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, and colleagues looked at this in women aged 34 to 49 who participated in an ongoing study focused on coronary artery disease development. As part of the study, AFC was measured in 2002-2003, with follow up in 2009-2010. Read full article.
Whatever Happened to Stem Cells?
In 1998, the stunning promise of embryonic stem cells was discovered, and it was thought that we just might be on the threshold of an age of miracles. But no miracle is a match for politics.
One day, when you are ill, when your heart finally beats a thousand times too many, when your liver is sclerotic beyond use, when your pancreas stops producing insulin, when your kidneys no longer protect you from toxins, Dr. Anthony Atala wants to heal you. In his vision, you will visit a hospital in Omaha or San Francisco or Buffalo, and a specialist will diagnose you. Then you’ll have blood taken to determine your genetic makeup, and then those results will be transmitted to an office manager in charge of a sterile white room in North Carolina that Atala has built. In a few days a small vial of stem cells that match your immunological profile perfectly will be extracted from a cryogenic tank in that room and shipped to your surgeon, who will use them to build you a new organ from scratch. It will take four to eight weeks to build and grow and implant the organ, and then you will be whole once again. Read full article.
Surrogate pregnancies on rise despite cost hurdles
But the Chicago advertising executive never expected she would have to sell her house, drop out of business school and move back in with her parents to tackle costs associated with hiring the surrogate mother who delivered a healthy baby girl on her behalf earlier this year.
She joins the selective but growing ranks of would-be parents – primarily upscale professionals with ample discretionary cash – turning to gestational surrogates to help them fulfill their dreams of having biologically connected children. This differs from traditional surrogacy, in which the surrogate is the child’s genetic mother.
But the costs faced by people working with gestational surrogates are daunting, with few options outside of creative self-funding or high-priced loans.
“I felt like movie stars do that,” said DiSantis, who despite a six-figure-plus income struggled with expenses that she said ultimately approached $300,000. “I didn’t know what it was or how it worked.” Read full article.
Sperm quality rises in winter
Human semen quality may rise and fall in seasonal variation, with the best quality being produced in the winter and spring.
Research suggests that semen produced during that time has a greater concentration of sperm of which a higher percentage are fast moving and appear normal when looked at under a microscope.
Researchers took semen samples from 6,477 men who had been referred with their partner to a fertility clinic in Israel. Men who had sperm counts in the normal range averaged 71 million sperm per millilitre in spring, which fell to a low of 64 million in autumn. Although total sperm motility was greatest during the summer months, the percentage of fast-moving sperm, thought to increase the chances of fertilisation, was highest in winter.
In men with lower than normal sperm concentration seasonal variation was less marked. The highest percentage of sperm with normal morphology was in the spring, and a slight trend towards greater motility was also observed during this time. However neither the concentration of sperm or the percentage of fast-moving sperm altered significantly between seasons. Read full article.