Fertility and Female Age

Social trends have led to deferring the age of child bearing not only in the developed countries but also in developing countries.

It is well understood that the number of oocytes in the ovaries decline naturally and spontaneously through process of programmed cell death.Hence chances of achieving pregnancy not only decline through natural conception but also through assisted reproductive technologies (IUI/IVF/ICSI)

This has been re-enforced by research led by Prof Siladitya Bhattacharya, of the Reproductive Medicine team at the University of Aberdeen (UK) who found that the chances of a woman having a baby following IVF go "very rapidly downhill" from the age of 37.Data was obtained from 121,744 women from across the UK.

They found the chances of having a baby following IVF start to decline by the time the woman reaches her mid-30s, but especially from 37.The team used data from women who underwent their very first cycle of IVF using their own eggs.The research also found that even after a pregnancy has been confirmed, women aged 38-39 were 43% more likely to have a miscarriage than women aged 18-34, while women aged 40-42 were almost twice as likely to lose the baby as the younger age group.

To conclude, age is amongst one of the most important factors which determines the success to achieving conception. Hence awareness of effect of age on fertility is important when counselling couples with infertility.