Written by Dr Oladapo Ashiru
~Punch Nigeria. Wednesday, November 15, 2017.
Recently, a consortium of fertility experts from various international organisations both in Europe and Africa met under the auspices of the World Health Organisation and came up with a new definition of "Infertility" which was published in the Fertility and Sterility Journal, September, 2017.
In the new definition, infertility is the failure to establish a clinical pregnancy after 12 months of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse due to impairment of a person's capacity to reproduce either as an individual or with his/ her partner.
Furthermore, they opine that fertility interventions may be less than one- year based on medical, sexual and reproductive history, age, physical findings and diagnostic test.
The most common cause of infertility in female is the inability to produce eggs that are normal. Disorders of egg production accounts for more than 30 per cent of infertility in women. Fortunately, 70 per cent of these cases can be successfully treated with the use of drugs that support ovulation.
Drugs like clomid, gonadotropins; menogon, follitrope, folligraft, gonal F and several other FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) help to stimulate the growth of follicles. Anovulation (inability to ovulate) can be due to four major factors:
Hormonal factors:
These are the most common causes of anovulation. The ovulatory mechanism is controlled by the complex balance of hormones and I liken it to an orchestra in the symphony, any disruption in this process can hinder ovulation. Three main factors causing this are:
Failure to produce mature eggs
In about 50 per cent cases of anovulation, the ovaries do not produce normal follicles in which the eggs can mature. Ovulation is rare if the eggs are immature and the chance of fertilisation becomes almost non-existent. Even when a substantial amount of ovulatory support hormones like FSH are given, and we obtain like 12 eggs, seven of the eggs would be fully matured while five eggs are immature and cannot be fertilised even using "brute force" with Intra cytoplasmic sperm injection.