Fertility Journal

Fertility Journal Archive

Forgotten Infertility Management

Have we forgotten the infertility treatment skills that were gained before the availability of modern assisted conception treatments? Modern infertility management appears to be geared to streamlining patients towards the high tech options available through assisted conception techniques, such as IVF, ICSI, egg and embryo donation. There is no doubt that ICSI has dramatically revolutionised […]

Changes to Legal Parenthood

On 6th April 2009, the parenthood provisions in Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Act 2008 came into force.  These amend the original provisions under the 1990 Act to determine legal parenthood following assisted conception treatments using donor sperm, donor eggs and donor embryos. The new provisions are not retrospective and do not […]

Elective single embryo transfer (eSET)

To find that you have succeeded and become pregnant following IVF is a wonderful experience. You have waited for so long and been through so much to get to this stage. Then comes that magical scan at 6 weeks, ….. 2 sacs!…. 2 heartbeats!….. twins! Something you had hardly dared to even dream of. The […]

Natural killer cells

A pregnancy is the ideal “transplant” because the mother does not reject it even though 50% of every baby’s genetic make-up is “foreign” coming from the father. This led to the theory that there must be some form of suppression of the mother’s own immune system to prevent the rejection of every pregnancy.

Fertility and the older woman

I have a very demanding career and would prefer to delay having a family.  Is this risky? Well it may be.  You are born with all the eggs you will ever have.  The majority of these are lost before puberty.  Of the remaining 400,000 eggs, you will lose about 1,000 per month.   As a result […]

Human admixed embryos

One of the most controversial issues in the new Human Fertilisation & Embryology Act centres on the creation of human “admixed embryos” that contain both human and animal genetic material.   These embryos would be created for research purposes in order to obtain stem cells and aid the understanding of disease processes. What is special about […]