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Leading Fertility expert Dr Gillian Lockwood says that women are still leaving it to late to try and have a baby.

Dr Lockwood has suggested that Egg freezing should be every father’s graduation present to his daughter. Dr Lockwood, of the Midland Fertility Centre, where half of Britain’s babies conceived from frozen eggs originated, said young women are still not getting the message about infertility.

She told The Times: ‘One part of me wants to say that [egg freezing] should be every dad’s graduation present for his daughter. It would be a very safe, low dose, and you could have 20 beautiful eggs in the freezer.

'But – and it’s a very big but – I’m concerned about how that would alter a woman’s life choices, that they might think: “Well, instead of having a family with Mr Not Quite Perfect, I can afford to wait for Mr Absolutely perfect”.

In Britain, women are delaying childbirth later than ever: the average woman here has her first child at 31, compared to 24 in 1962. About 6,500 eggs have been stored in Britain in the decade since egg freezing was licensed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Yet the chances of conceiving a baby from a frozen egg are low, and preparing for it is a painful, costly process involving potent fertility drugs, chemicals and surgery.

Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston is rumoured to have frozen her eggs, and in a recent episode of the U.S. reality television show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kim injected herself with hormones in preparation for doing the same.

But despite egg freezing being something often talked about as a viable option, just 12 babies have been born from frozen eggs in this country. However this may slowly change after a recent report by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) stated that egg freezing is no longer experimental technology. The organisation has recommended that women freeze their eggs in their 20s and 30s to help them conceive later in life.

And it is timing that is key, says Dr Lockwood. 'By the time many women decide they want to freeze their eggs, they are often in their late 30s, when their eggs have declined in quality significantly. I get many calls from women around the age of 38 who want their eggs frozen,’ she told the Mail last month.

Last year Brigitte Adams decided to freeze her eggs at the age of 38, to safeguard what was left of her fertility ‘A frozen egg from a 38-year-old will be better than a fresh one from a 42-year-old, but pregnancy is still not very likely.’ Dr Lockwood added that a 30-year-old who freezes her eggs would have a 30-40 per cent chance of having a child. After 38, this falls to 25 per cent.

And even freezing your eggs at 30 could have its downsides, she said. 'Will it mean a woman waits around all her life for Mr Perfect, knowing she has healthy eggs from her 30-year-old self in the freezer, but then becomes bitter because she has rejected all the Mr Pretty Well Good Enoughs and found herself single and childless at 45, with frozen eggs that turned out not to work?’

Other experts have cautioned that egg freezing is by no means a fail-safe insurance policy. Dr Magdy Asaad, clinical director of the London Fertility Centre, says the chances of getting a baby from a frozen egg are about 1 to 3 per cent for each egg. Also, only eight out of ten eggs survive the thawing process and there are still some concerns about whether egg freezing is effective or safe in terms of the long-term health of children.

There have also been suggestions that chemicals applied to the egg wall during flash-freezing could potentially damage the egg. Egg freezing is funded by the NHS if carried out for women having cancer treatment. Otherwise it costs £5,000 per cycle, then £200 a year to pay for safe storage of the eggs.

One woman who chose to freeze her eggs was Brigitte Adams. Last year, at the age of 38, she decided to take action to safeguard what was left of her fertility. She told The Times: 'I know I have less than a 30 per cent chance - but it's better than zero chance. I feel I have at least done something proactive and have a back-up plan.' She has gone on to found the website Eggsurance to encourage other women to think about freezing their eggs as an 'insurance policy' that can be used later.

Ms Adams was 37 when she started thinking about the procedure. 'I just always expected that at my age I would already have kids. I also had some close friends who were either going through difficult IVF treatments or looking into the adoption process. 'I contacted a fertility doctor in my city who told me to “just get pregnant". Not exactly what I wanted to hear.' She adds that she assumed because she ate well and exercised that she must have a healthy supply of eggs. 'So I was surprised when I learned that maternal age directly correlates to the health of your eggs.'

Her family were incredibly supportive, she says. 'My parents were all for it and even offered to pay for some of the treatment costs. My friends, on the other hand, were shocked initially as they did not know anybody who had had their eggs frozen. 'However, once I explained the procedure to them they were extremely supportive and of great help. You really need a strong support system through a process like this as it is both physically and emotionally challenging.'

Article: 26th November 2012 www.dailymail.co.uk

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The first baby to be born from 'Flash frozen' eggs is set to change the future of fertility treatment for British women.

Olivia Bate’s birth will give hope to hundreds of women who need to freeze their eggs for future fertility treatment. For Olivia is the UK’s first baby to be born from an egg that was flash frozen – frozen in less than 60 seconds. Months later the egg was thawed, fertilised and placed in her mother Karen Bateman’s womb.

Experts say the technique gives women the chance to have a child at 50 with no greater chance of miscarriage or Down’s syndrome than they had at 30. The chances of a successful pregnancy following thawing from ‘vitrified’ – or flash frozen – eggs increase dramatically, they explained. With normal freezing techniques, which takes about two hours, 65 per cent of eggs survive the thawing process. With vitrification this rises to 95 per cent.

Gillian Lockwood, of Midland Fertility Services, who carried out the treatment, said: ‘Her birth gives hope to the many young women who want to preserve their fertility before they have life-saving cancer treatment – and also to those women who know that they want to be mothers one day, but can’t try for a baby now.

‘Because so many more eggs survive this thawing process, it means that women can have just one cycle of treatment and get enough eggs to freeze, instead of having to have several treatment cycles. ‘It means that many more women will be able to have this opportunity, which will change the course of fertility treatment in the UK and the way that women look at their lives.’

Women in their early 30s currently have a narrow window of opportunity to become pregnant before the quality of their eggs decline. But Dr Lockwood added: ‘Vitrification will be as influential for women as the contraceptive pill. They will no longer have to worry about the narrow window.

‘If they freeze their eggs at 30, then those eggs will stay that age for ever, so they can have a baby even at 50 with no greater chance of miscarriage or Down’s syndrome than they had at 30.’ Olivia’s parents, Carl Bate and Miss Bateman, who live in Wolverhampton, started trying for a family in 2002. But Karen, 36, a chemist dispenser, had been diagnosed with endometriosis and doctors warned she may not be able to conceive. But they refused to give up hope and in 2009, the couple began a course of IVF treatment. Karen managed to produce 17 eggs, but only one viable embryo developed and the treatment failed.

Mr Bate, 40, a director of a catering equipment company, said: ‘We were absolutely devastated when the treatment failed. We had been pinning all our hopes on it working.’ In 2009 the couple decided to try again with IVF. They were first to try the freezing technique and eight of Karen’s eggs were ‘flash frozen’.

For the process, the egg is laid on a film-like ‘leaf’ and it is placed within a tiny droplet of solution. It is then passed through liquid nitrogen gases which rapidly freezes the liquid droplet to a glass like solid in which the egg is preserved. The whole process takes less than a minute and the egg is then immediately stored in liquid nitrogen for future use. Dr Lockwood said: ‘Because it is frozen so quickly, the egg undergoes less structural damage which means it is has a better chance of surviving the thawing process.’

In March 2010, five months after they were flash frozen, Miss Bateman’s eggs were thawed and two embryos were put back into her womb. The couple faced a tense two-week wait to find out if the treatment had been successful. Miss Bateman said: ‘It was the longest wait of our lives. I did a pregnancy test early one morning and ran in screaming to Carl that it was positive.We were just overjoyed when she was born.’

Article: 4th April 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk

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A mother plans to freeze her eggs so that her infertile daughter may someday be able to use them to give birth to her own brother or sister.

Toddler Mackenzie Stephens was born with Turner Syndrome, a hereditary condition which means she is missing an X-chromosome. The condition, which only affects girls, means two-year-old Mackenzie was born without ovaries, preventing her from ever having a child of her own naturally.

When Penny Jarvis, herself a mother of five, learnt that her daughter might never be able to have children of her own, she was devastated. So Ms Jarvis, 25, has decided to freeze her own eggs so someday Mackenzie can use them for IVF and start a family. However, technically, this means Mackenzie's future child would be both her offspring and her sibling.

Ms Jarvis described how she and partner Karl Stephens, 42, were distraught when the doctor broke the news about their daughter's condition. The full-time mother from Sheffield, said: 'The doctor was talking about chromosomes and things and it was all a bit of a blur.

'The only word I heard at the time was 'infertility' and I just burst into tears. It's what most people want to be; a mum. 'She has three sisters and I couldn't imagine her growing up and watching them all have children while she couldn't have any of her own. 'Obviously, every mother wants to be a grandmother someday - that's what they dream of.

'As I was leaving the hospital, the consultant told me not to look up Turner Syndrome on the internet as it was full of worst-case scenarios. 'But, of course, I did it anyway. As soon as we were over the shock, Karl and I looked it up together as we had never even heard of it before and neither had any of our friends.

'While some of the stuff I was reading was scary - talk of congenital heart defects and diabetes - I discovered that egg donation was a possibility.' Enlarge Mackenzie has Turner Syndrome, which means she doesn't have ovaries Turner Syndrome affects one in every 2,500 girls. It causes a number of mental and physical health issues, but most can be corrected or treated with surgery, drugs and psychological therapy.

The most common symptoms are swelling of the limbs, small stature and infertility. Mackenzie, who requires a daily dose of growth hormone, is also partially deaf and uses Makaton sign language to communicate as she suffers from speech problems. She also has severe mood swings and sees a behavioural psychologist. It is hoped these will improve as she gets older.

Her mother dreams that someday she will fall in love and start a family of her own. When the time comes, Penny said, the option will be there for her to use her mother's eggs to have a child.

Mothers only have a short period in which they can make the donation to their daughters because, by the time they reach the age of 40, their eggs are likely to be of too poor quality to store. However, medical advances in recent years have made it possible to store the eggs for longer periods.

The practice has been criticised by some ethicists who fear that it could cause the daughters psychological problems, while the resulting children could be confused about their relationship to their mother and grandmother.

But Penny, who has four other children; Jaymie-Leigh, five months, Morgan, six, and twins William and Abigail, three, said that any mother would do the same for their child.

She said: 'You could look at it as Mackenzie giving birth to her own brother or sister, but I choose not to see it like that. 'You do the best for your children and Mackenzie's daughter or son would be her own.

'It's a comfort to know that if she did have a child they would still have part of her own genetic make-up as well, so it would still be a part of her.' 'I'd like to think her sisters would offer their eggs too. But if they didn't, at least the option would be there for her.'

'A few people have told me they think it's a bit sick, but on the whole people have been supportive. However, while Penny is confident she is doing the right thing for her daughter, some medical experts are less sure.

Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) said: 'One can fully understand the sadness for a mother to discover that her little daughter suffers from Turner Syndrome, but I do not think putting her own eggs in the freezer is either a practical or an ethical solution.' She said there was a possibility that Turner Syndrome could be passed on genetically and therefore most doctors would not want to use the grandmother's eggs.

Ms Quintavalle added: 'Social and ethical objections are equally compelling.

'A child born in this way would be a half-sibling of the birth mother, her husband having fertilised the eggs of his mother-in-law.

'Psychologists are already talking about the trauma of genealogical bewilderment, as egg and sperm donation and surrogacy create more and more artificial conceptions.'

A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority added: 'When providing treatment, it is important that account has been taken of the welfare of any child who may be born as a result of the treatment and of any other child who may be affected by the birth.'

Article: 10th January 2011 www.dailymail.co.uk

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A new technique for preserving sperm could offer men with low sperm counts, cancer, or viruses such as HIV the hope of fathering healthy children.

Experts found that fast-freezing sperm preserves its ability to swim towards an egg far more efficiently than the slow-freezing method currently in use.

The study, from experts in Chile and Germany, will be presented at the World Congress of Fertility and Sterility in Munich.

Current slow-freezing techniques mean the sperm only retains 30 to 40 per cent of activity. But rapid freezing - also known as vitrification - allows that figure to rise to almost 80 per cent.

Vitrification is already used to quick-freeze eggs and embryos with success, allowing spare ones to be used in IVF at a later date.

Following thawing, more eggs and embryos survive with vitrification than with older, slower cooling techniques.

In vitrification, cryopreservation agents are added to lower the water content in cells and prevent ice crystals building up.

In the latest study, plasma was separated and removed and the sperm placed in a sucrose solution before being plunged into liquid nitrogen to fast-freeze.

When sperm was rethawed in the study, it regained motility (77 per cent versus 29 per cent with slow cooling) and showed less damage.

The removal of plasma means HIV and other viruses can be removed, giving HIV positive men the chance of fathering a child without the likelihood of passing on the virus to mother or baby.

Men with a low sperm count and whose sperm is deteriorating in quality over time would also benefit from the technique.

Some men with low sperm counts fail to produce a good enough sample when it is time for IVF. The new technique could also allow several samples to be put together as one.

Lead researcher Professor Raul Sanchez, from La Frontera University in Chile, said: 'This work shows that we can preserve functional sperm via vitrification, which gives a greater chance of success for patients with low sperm counts.

'The other great advantage of this technique is that it can eliminate potential sources of infection such as Aids or hepatitis B, which are present in seminal plasma.

'It (also) has the potential to allow HIV positive men to have children without worrying about transmitting the virus.'

Ian Cooke, professor emeritus at Sheffield University and education director for the International Federation of Fertility Societies, said: 'This looks a very exciting technique as it is much faster than the conventional slow-freeze procedure.

'In addition, the prospect of use with HIV positive patients has great potential, although we'd want to confirm the absence of residual HIV in sperm samples before going ahead.'

Article: Monday 13th September 2010 www.dailymail.co.uk

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Next month, during a rare break from her frenetic career as a violinist, Linzi Stoppard will begin the gruelling preparations required to have her eggs frozen.

Daily hormone injections will shut down her ovaries. Then, further injections will cause what is known as 'hyper-ovulation'. Instead of producing one or two mature follicles - fluid-filled sacs located inside the ovaries - she will produce dozens.

A final injection will be given to mature them. After around four weeks of treatment, Linzi, 31, will be sedated while an embryologist harvests around ten healthy eggs using an ultrasound probe and places them in a tank of liquid nitrogen, stored at -195C until such time as she needs them.

'It's a back-up plan for the future, if we find we struggle to conceive naturally when the time is right,' is the way Linzi and her husband, Will, look at it. If she cannot conceive naturally when the 'right time' comes, she hopes that doctors can use her stored, younger eggs and help her to conceive using IVF.

But when that 'right time' might be is anyone's guess. Linzi has already been married for six years to Will, 37, the son of playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, but having seen her career as an electric violinist with the rock band Fuse suddenly take off, babies are not yet on her agenda.

'I just can't imagine there being a window in the next few years when we could try for a baby,' she says.

If her attitude to motherhood seems somewhat blase, then Linzi's story is far from unusual. According to British fertility experts this week, evidence suggests that growing numbers of women are seeking to put motherhood on ice, either so they can focus on their careers or because they simply haven't yet found Mr Right.

Eight out of ten women interviewed by the NHS-run Leeds Centre for Reproductive Medicine said they would be prepared to fork out the average £4,000 required to pay for the procedure so they could delay starting a family and focus instead on reaching the top of their professions.

While egg freezing for medical reasons such as cancer is funded by the NHS, egg freezing for lifestyle purposes is not. And this week, delegates at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology's annual conference heard that growing numbers of women in their 30s and 40s are freezing their eggs to 'take pressure off the search for the right partner'.

Just as the Pill revolutionised the lives of women from the Sixties onwards, human egg cryopreservation could change the face of fertility in Britain today, it is claimed.

Some experts even say that in the next 40 years having eggs frozen could become as commonplace as having a smear test.

Lucy Sutton, 36, a PR consultant from West London, had her eggs frozen in March 2008 at London's private Bridge Fertility Centre, at a cost of £5,000. It costs £110 a year to keep them frozen.

'It wasn't that I picked my career over meeting Mr Right,' she insists. 'He just hasn't shown up yet. I think there are lots of women out there like me. We don't want to settle for second best

During her 20s, Lucy assumed that she could have a baby whenever she wanted. Gradually, as she entered her 30s, it dawned on her that time was running out.

'I think women get fooled by looking at pictures of older celebrities having their first baby. Biologically, your fertility massively declines in your 30s.'

The six-week procedure she underwent was not a pleasant experience; daily injections of ovulation drugs which caused water retention, hot flushes and weight gain; a series of vaginal ultrasound scans and blood tests to monitor the developing eggs. Only then were the eggs harvested under general anaesthetic.

'After the cycle of treatment I felt drained,' she admits. 'It took everything out of me.'

The irony is, of course, that she hopes never to have to use them. She admits: 'I still hope I'll be lucky enough to meet someone and have a child naturally, but this just takes the pressure off meeting someone.'

Since under going the procedure two years ago, she has had a few relationships, but still no one serious enough to consider having children with. But she insists that, thanks to egg freezing, the ticking of her biological clock has quietened.

'I feel really relaxed about my fertility now,' she says.

The origins of cryopreservation in fertility treatment go back to the late Sixties, with experiments on mice.

The first successful pregnancy from a frozen egg occurred in 1986, in Australia. But while the procedure was developed by doctors to help cancer patients and women at risk of an early menopause, more and more women flocking to Britain's 45 registered fertility clinics are doing so for social reasons.

Many are either ageing singletons who haven't yet found a partner, or career women who want to delay motherhood but fear the decline of their fertility.

In reality, of course, egg freezing offers no guarantees to women who want to delay motherhood. The procedure is still relatively new and the UK's first birth from a frozen, thawed egg was less than ten years ago.

According to figures held by independent regulator, The Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA), around 6,000 eggs have been stored in the UK, from which around 150 embryos have been created.

These embryos resulted in just five live births.

A woman's best chance of having a baby remains in trying to conceive before her 35th birthday.

Read more: Article www.dailymail.co.uk 1st July 2010

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Failure to find 'Mr Right' is driving growing numbers of older women to put motherhood on ice.

Women in their 30s and 40s, who once would have settled for second best, are freezing their eggs while they continue their search for a man who is father material, British fertility doctors have revealed.

Their plight echoes that of radio presenter and model Lisa Snowdon who recently revealed her worries that she is part of a growing female phenomenon of SAS: single, attractive and successful women who have everything except for a partner.

Miss Snowdon, 38, counts George Clooney among her former beaus but has been single for five years.

Last night, British fertility doctors said contrary to the popular perception, the majority of women freezing their eggs for non-medical reasons are not career hungry but simply unlucky in love.

The youngest woman seen at the Leeds Centre for Reproductive Medicine is 28 - most are in their late 30s. Dr Srilatha Gorthi, a senior research fellow at the clinic, said: 'The come in their 30s or late 30s if they haven't found the right partner.'

At the Care chain of fertility clinics, the technique is now as popular with healthy women as with cancer patients and women at risk of premature menopause.

Dr Simon Fishel, managing director of the 11-clinic chain, said: 'We don't see many women of 20 or even 30. 'Women are coming in in their late 30s because they are starting to feel that nothing is happening. They have fallen out of a relationships, they haven't got a man, they are career people.'

The trend was brought to light by a study of all the women who had applied to have their eggs frozen at a Belgian clinic between July of last year and May of this year.

Highly-educated, financially secure women, they were all in their late 30s and early 40s, and had considered adoption or single motherhood, before plumping to spend hundreds of pounds on IVF and egg vitrification, or freezing.

They told their doctors that they wanted to 'take the pressure of the search for the right partner' and 'give a future relationship more time to blossom' before bringing up the subject of babies.

Some of the 26 women also said they were taking out insurance against future infertility, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology's annual conference heard.

Study leader Dr Julie Nekkebroeck, from the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at the Free University of Brussels, said: 'The women I saw were not young calculating career women who have everything worked out and deliberately postpone motherhood to advance their careers.

'By vitrifying their oocytes (eggs) they wanted to buy time to find the right partner and do everything they could to prevent age-related infertility. 'Moreover, frozen oocytes were considered as very precious goods, since even if they would meet "Mr Right" in the near future, they would only use the frozen oocytes in the last instance, after trying to conceive naturally.'

But others warned that egg freezing does not guarantee motherhood - and pointed out that by the time a woman reaches her late 30s, the quality of her eggs will have already deteriorated.

Clare Lewis-Jones, of the charity Infertility Network UK, said: 'Many women now choose to delay having children and although they should be supported in that choice, they need to be aware of the potential problems they may encounter when they do decide the time is right for motherhood.

'Age has an impact on male as well as female fertility and when they do meet Mr Right, they may well find that he has fertility problems. They also need to be aware that using fertility treatment is no guarantee of success.'

Professor David Adamson, of the International Federation of Fertility Societies, cautioned: 'Planning reproductive life should be based on accurate information.

'The potential value of social egg freezing is yet to be determined through further studies because of concerns about its effectiveness, safety for the baby, and its application in healthy women.

'At this time, there’s no guarantee that egg-freezing will result in a baby in the future, even for young women. 'There is much misunderstanding of impact of age on reproduction, but essentially if a woman freezes her eggs when she is young, she has a greater chance of success than does an older woman who freezes her eggs.'

Robert Winston, the IVF pioneer and broadcaster, last year called for a curb on clinics offering freezing for non-medical reasons until more research was carried out.

He said: 'Women are paying a very high premium for an expensive "insurance" policy. 'And this policy should not be sold at the present time although it is being sold at clinics in London and other places. 'The whole thing is a bit of a confidence trick.'

The procedure was introduced to give cancer patients, who face the risk of being left infertile by their treatment, the possibility of still having children later in life.

But, today, several hundred British women have put their eggs on ice and a handful of babies have been born. Forty five clinics do egg freezing, charging £2,500 to £5,000 per session. But some women could go through up to 10 sessions, taking their bill to £50,000.

Article: www.dailymail.co.uk 28th June 2010

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Young women undergoing cancer treatment have an increasing number of options for preserving their fertility, a leading researcher told attendees today at the 58th Annual Clinical Meeting of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Thanks to a new medical discipline known as oncofertility, the reproductive outlook for women cancer patients is becoming as good as for men, who long have had the option of banking their sperm, according to Teresa K. Woodruff, PhD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, in her lecture "Oncofertility: The Preservation of Fertility Options for Young People with Cancer." A promising new technique for preserving ovarian tissue has the potential to safeguard the future fertility even of very young girls undergoing cancer treatment, she said.

Dr. Woodruff, the Thomas J. Watkins professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern, coined the term "oncofertility" to describe oncologists and reproductive specialists working hand-in-hand to preserve patients' fertility while treating their disease. She is the leader of the Oncofertility Consortium, which draws on cutting-edge research to counsel patients on fertility options. Headquartered at Northwestern and supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Consortium operates through more than 50 centers in 29 states.

About 140,000 people under age 45 are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, Dr. Woodruff said. "There are no good numbers for how many are threatened with loss of fertility, because it depends on the course of the disease and treatment prescribed," she said.

Chemotherapy affects fertility by attacking follicles in the ovaries that contain a woman's lifetime supply of eggs, Dr. Woodruff explained. Because follicles grow rapidly, they are especially sensitive to cancer drugs, which target fast-growing cancer cells. If drugs damage only mature follicles and the eggs they contain, a woman may stop having periods during treatment but resume menstrual cycles after she completes chemotherapy. But if drugs destroy all the follicles, she will be left sterile.

Radiation treatment to the abdomen can damage the follicles, as well as the uterus. If directed to the head, radiation can impact fertility by blocking production of reproductive hormones in the brain.

Many women with cancer who want to safeguard their fertility opt for egg or embryo banking, which oncofertility specialists are making available to more patients. "Egg banking also is much more effective now than five or ten years ago, because we can freeze the eggs better," Dr. Woodruff said.

However, egg banking is not suitable for girls who have not yet gone through puberty or for women who cannot postpone cancer treatment while they take hormones to stimulate production of mature eggs. A new option called ovarian tissue cryopreservation sidesteps these problems. Doctors remove an ovary via laparoscopy, an outpatient surgery that takes 30 to 45 minutes. The procedure requires no hormones and does not delay cancer treatment for more than a couple of days. Tissue from the removed ovary is sliced into strips, frozen, and stored. Because a girl is born with all the eggs she will ever have, this technique could be used on a child as young as one year of age, Dr. Woodruff said.

Following cancer treatment or whenever a woman is ready to have a child, the ovarian tissue can be thawed and transplanted back into her body. "Worldwide, there have been about 20 live births resulting from this procedure, including those among some cancer patients," Dr. Woodruff said. Because transplantation does carry the potential risk of reintroducing cancer cells back into the body, it is not recommended for women who have had ovarian cancer or blood system cancers, such as leukemia or lymphoma.

Researchers are working hard to perfect a safer use of preserved ovarian tissue called in vitro follicle maturation, which may be available in several years. "Instead of growing follicles in a woman's body, we grow them in a dish," Dr. Woodruff explained. "That would allow us to eliminate the possibility of reintroducing the cancer she's just survived. We've produced live, healthy offspring in mice and have gotten good quality eggs in both baboons and rhesus monkeys. Human follicles also have adapted rapidly to the in vitro system. They grow rapidly and are fairly easy to work with."

Article 18th May 2010 www.medicalnewstoday.com

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As more women delay childbearing until their 30s and 40s, a growing number are freezing their eggs in a process known as oocyte cryopreservation, the Chicago Tribune reports. The process is most commonly used by women undergoing medical treatments that could affect fertility. However, the procedure is now being marketed as an option for healthy women who want to delay having children.

Nicole Noyes, co-director of the Oocyte Cryopreservation Program at the New York University Fertility Center, said that women lose much of their natural fertility between ages 35 and 40 and that the quality of their eggs decreases with age, which can increase their chances of miscarrying.

The two- to three-week oocytpe cryopreservation process involves taking fertility medications that mature multiple eggs in the ovaries. Those eggs are then extracted, gently dehydrated and stored in liquid nitrogen. When the woman wants to become pregnant, the eggs are thawed, fertilized and transferred to the uterus as embryos.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine says that the process is "experimental" and warns that healthy women should not use it as a way to defer reproductive aging until there is more "proven scientific information" on it.

Glenn Schattman, associate professor of reproductive medicine at Cornell University's Weil Medical College and co-author of the ASRM guidelines, said that about 50% of fertility clinics offer egg freezing.

There is no national registry to track how many pregnancies derived from previously frozen eggs, but according to a 2009 study, 936 infants have been born from frozen eggs throughout the world without any increased rate of birth defects.

According to Noyes, the freezing process costs about $9,500 with some private clinics charging an addition $1,000 to $3,000. The thaw cycle costs between $3,500 and $5,000 (Deardoff, Chicago Tribune, 4/2).

Article Date: 07 Apr 2010 from www.medicalnewstoday.com

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