We live in a time when infertility is linked to age. Did you know that the proportion of women delaying motherhood into their 30s and early 40s is increasing? It’s important to understand that fertility declines with a woman’s age due to the decrease in the number of eggs remaining in the ovaries, in other words, the ovarian reserve.
When we talk about ovarian reserve, we’re referring to the number of eggs a woman has in her ovaries at a given time.
What factors explain the delay in motherhood?
Several factors help explain the delay in motherhood:
- Higher levels of education.
- Employment.
- Career development.
- Lack of policies and incentives that support motherhood.
- The mistaken belief that assisted reproduction treatments can resolve this age-related situation.
I’m 35… now what?
Every day, more and more women over 35 come to us for consultations; this is what we refer to as advanced maternal age, mainly due to the fact that from this age onward there is a dramatic increase in the number of embryos with abnormal genetic makeup (aneuploid), around 30%, rising to 60% at age 40 and up to 90% at more advanced ages. In women over 43, the chance of having a euploid embryo doesn’t even reach 5%.
If you’re over 35, it’s recommended to begin a fertility workup after 6 months of trying to conceive without success, starting with an assessment of ovarian reserve using anti-Müllerian hormone, as well as other tests such as thyroid function, coagulation, infectious disease screening, semen analysis, and an eventual assessment of tubal patency.
How to approach this problem?
Ideally, prevention would be the answer, with proper information for women about the real impact of age on their fertility, as well as social egg freezing, allowing them to delay motherhood with greater peace of mind.
Once a woman comes in for a consultation, specific protocols must be established to maximize her chances of success:
- Stimulation protocols.
- Genetic study (duostim).
- Preimplantation genetic testing of her embryos, to shorten the time to pregnancy and reduce the miscarriage rate, allowing single embryo transfer and thereby minimizing obstetric risks, which are higher at an older maternal age.
When age no longer allows for treatment with a woman’s own eggs, egg donation is the main solution for women over 40 who have not succeeded with other therapies. In the future, it may be possible to obtain eggs from stem cells derived from bone marrow, capable of generating cells of any lineage (i.e., pluripotent), or from stem cells derived from the ovary; these are the current lines of research for this problem.
If you think this might be your situation or would like more personalized care, get in touch with our clinic and request your first free consultation.
At Fertia, we also encourage you to visit our blog for more interesting articles, as well as our YouTube channel, where we help thousands of couples achieve their dream of starting a family.
