INFERTILITY FACTS NEWS AND VIEWS – Fertility Drugs and Breast Cancer Risks

October is being observed as Breast Cancer Month and as such, my Friday posts will largely surround this theme.

When I was taking fertility drugs, outside of the fact that they had such horrible side effects for me, I often wondered what other effects they were having on my body. Was I at increased risks for breast cancer or ovarian cancer, etc.

According to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, women who took the common fertility drug, clomiphene citrate (clomid) as part of their fertility treatment, did not experience increased risk for breast cancer, compared to women who did not take this drug.

Under current practices, clomiphene citrate is limited to three to six cycles with doses up to 100mg. A small group of women who took up 12 cycles however, saw an elevated risk of breast cancer 1.5 times the risks of women who did not take this drug. “This could be a result of persistent infertility rather than effects of this drug,” said Dr. Louise A. Brinton, Ph.D., M.P.H., chief of the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Md. 

Read more, by visiting the link below:-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140403084245.htm

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INFERTILITY FACTS, NEWS AND VIEWS - Unexplained Infertility, could exposure to BPA be the reason?

About 20% of couples experience what is known as unexplained infertility. This occurs when  there is difficulty conceiving, but it is not clear why.

According to a recent study, exposure to BPA (the material used in water bottles, some plastic containers, baby bottles etc.) could be contributing to this, as this could result in the disruption of the maturation of eggs.

Read more, by following the link below:-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130731093718.htm

post image by:

http://topnews.ae/content/217257-bpa-plastic-harmful-couples

Good News for Cancer Patients of Childbearing Age

Sadly, many women of childbearing age who has cancer, and are undergoing chemotherapy, do not  know that their ability to conceive can be severely hampered, because of the drugs administered in this process. As a result, women in this regard are encouraged to have this conversation with their doctor.

There is renewed reasons to hope though, that they still will be able to conceive, as Northwestern Medicine scientists have now found a way to prevent the demise of immature ovarian eggs due to chemotherapy.

Read more in this regard, by following the link below:-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130617142332.htm

From the article:

"This research advances the efforts to find a medical treatment to protect the fertility and hormone health of girls and young women during cancer treatment, " said So-Youn Kim, the lead investigator and a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Teresa Woodruff, chief of fertility preservation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. 

Adding imatinib mesylate to the drug cisplatin blocks the action of a protein that triggers a cascade of events resulting in death of the immature eggs. Kim discovered the protein that triggers the oocyte's ultimate death is Tap63.

 Previous research suggested that imatinib is a fertility-protecting drug against cisplatin, but reports of the drug's effectiveness have been contradictory, Kim said. Her research confirms its effectiveness in an animal model."

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http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=636619321613417514#editor/target=post;postID=903016404156163058

“Menopause May Be an Unintended Outcome of Men's Preference for Younger Mates”

I have heard quite a few theories for menopause, but I have never heard of the above, until recently. When I think about it though, there could be some truth to this because it is largely true that older men do in fact gravitate towards younger mates.

In a recent article by Science Daily, researchers have concluded that what causes menopause in women is actually men, relating specifically to reproduction.

Read the full story, by following the link below:-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130614082653.htm

From the article

“Over time, human males have shown a preference for younger women in selecting mates, stacking the Darwinian deck against continued fertility in older women, the researchers have found.

"In a sense it is like aging, but it is different because it is an all-or-nothing process that has been accelerated because of preferential mating," says Singh, a professor in McMaster's Department of Biology whose research specialties include the evolution of human diversity.

While conventional thinking has held that menopause prevents older women from continuing to reproduce, in fact, the researchers' new theory says it is the lack of reproduction that has given rise to menopause.”

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