Fertility: Age is no barrier...

Benjamin Franklin said that the only certainties in this world are death and taxes. To these, women might add a third: the menopause.

But this year, two separate developments have suggested that Franklin was right after all.

In March came a report indicating that ovaries contain stem cells that might be prompted to carry on making eggs throughout a woman's adult life.

Then, in October, Belgian doctors reported that a woman whose ovaries were damaged by cancer chemotherapy had given birth, possibly owing to a graft of her own preserved ovarian tissue that they had transplanted into her body. Together, these results hinted that women might one day be able to delay starting their families until their forties or beyond.

The scientists working on these projects aim to develop methods to preserve the fertility of women who have been driven through a premature menopause by treatments for diseases such as cancer.

But given that many women in industrialized societies want to delay reproduction while they further their careers, such methods are inevitably also going to be seen as tools for healthy women.

Full article: Nature.com

Photo credit: Cari Ellen and Jadyn, by aturkus / Alan Turkus, on Flickr
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Category: menopause, ovaries, pregnancy, research, stem-cell research