IVA and the great fertility revolution

Even the late Prof Sir Robert Edwards, godfather of assisted reproduction, would be astonished by the experimental treatments that today’s fertility scientists keep coming up with.

Could the Nobel prizewinner who developed in-vitro fertility (IVF) treatment – which led to the birth of the first “test-tube baby”, Louise Brown, in 1978 – have imagined the latest leap forward? IVA, or in-vitro activation, seems to offer hope in the most impossible cases: women who have passed through the menopause. According to the Daisy Network, the support group for those who experience menopause prematurely, some 110,000 women in Britain between the ages of 12 and 40 are affected.

The Japanese-American team behind IVA announced last week that they have pioneered a technique that can find – like a needle in a haystack – primordial cells in the ovaries of women who have undergone menopause in their early thirties. These cells, which researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine in California and St Marianna University School of Medicine in Kawasaki, Japan, describe as “residual follicles”, contained immature eggs that could be nurtured into life, fertilised and then grown into embryos for implantation.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported that the scientists’ work has already led to the birth of one baby boy, with another healthy pregnancy underway. Further case work is ongoing.

Truly no stone is being left unturned in the great fertility revolution. Every year seems to bring advances in this branch of gynaecology. Some are straightforward; for example, scientists at the University of Southampton, led by Nick Macklon, professor of gynaecology and obstetrics, have just discovered that a “choosy” uterus can reject poor quality embryos, preventing implantation. The team’s work could have a real impact on IVF success rates, Prof Macklon explains: “The big problem in IVF is still the low chance of getting embryos to implant. These new insights into how an endometrium (the lining of the womb) chooses an embryo may open new avenues to develop treatments.”