Dr. Henry CliffPregnancy complications have always engaged doctors. This is not merely because of the medical expertise and professional ethics but also from the viewpoint of providing solution for women facing problem with getting pregnant.
Poor responder is a term which is used to refer to women who face difficulties with conceiving. There are various kinds of solutions which are put forward by the medical professionals for such women. One of the major steps is to opt for donor eggs for getting pregnant. For women with pregnancy issues, the problem is with their biological cycle which can be categorized as:
- Need of more gonadotropin through therapy
- Poor ovarian reserve testing which means increase in FSH and lowered AMH
It is not necessary that older women only face pregnancy problems but these can occur with younger women as well.
The problems like premature ovarian failure and poor response to medications can be seen at any age in the patients. There are all sorts of medications proposed for helping poor responders and to make their ovaries more receptive towards gonadotropins.
The Twist with Growth Hormone
Ovarian reserve patients can be helped with proper growth hormone medication. The proposal of using ovarian stimulation and GH medication is in research for long i.e. from almost 20 years and is not something new.
The results are suggested to be beneficial from the treatment but still the use of GH for the problem has not gained popularity due to various reasons. These include limited data availability, FDA’s non-approval and high cost of GH drugs.
The Problem
With aging in women, eggs also age which in turn brings weakness in its spindle apparatus, the line where chromosomes line up to get divided after fertilization. When spindle is weak, it can fail that further results in uneven distribution of chromosomes in the fertilized eggs. This can result into anomaly where instead of a pair of chromosomes, 2 of them can go into one cell while the left one gets into other. This brings in genetic abnormality in the embryo makeup and hinders its survival or results into genetic disorders like Down’s syndrome.
The Solution available
Occyte maturation is said to be affected by growth hormones which is said to improve the quality of egg. In clinical research on animals, it is found that with the use of GH production of both IGF-1 and IGF-2, which are insulin like growth factors is increased that play an important role in egg maturation. Also, findings show that HGH enhances the capacity to repair DNA which then helps in reversing the age related egg changes.
By proper GH administration in women, it is found that the rate of pregnancy can be benefitted; also minimizing the age effects on poor responders. GH supplementation is further very beneficial for advanced maternal aged women. It should be clearly kept in mind that GH does not enhance the response to the medication but improves the quality of the egg.