The combination of 4 chemotherapeutic drugs is being researched for its effect of ovary rejuvenation. It is usually administered to fight a specific type of blood cancer but it may also increase the follicle reserve and thus revitalize the ovaries.
It is widely believed that once a woman’s egg reserve gets depleted, nothing can replenish it. However, this “amazing new discovery”, as researchers call it, contradicts this opinion. The ovarian reserve is the amount of follicles that each woman naturally has. Researchers claim that it is still too early to determine the importance of this discovery in relation to fertility, ovary rejuvenation and egg quality.
A new study that was published in the Human Reproduction Journal, focuses on the analysis of ovarian tissue from 14 girls and women between the ages of 14 and 29. Some of them had undergone chemotherapy to treat their Hodgkin Lymphoma . The study was motivated by the observation that, unlike other therapies, the chemotherapy combination known as ABVD , does not have a negative effect on patients’ fertility.
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh conducted a study to determine why this specific combination of drugs does not influence the fertility of the patients.
They used samples of ovarian tissue from the ovaries of volunteering participants. They noticed that the ovarian tissue of the 8 patients subjected to ABVD, had many more immature follicles than the ovarian tissue of both the healthy volunteers and the volunteers that had been treated with other types of chemotherapy. Furthermore, the ovarian tissue samples of the patients treated with ABVD were just as healthy as the samples of the healthy young women participants.
“This outcome truly surprised us, we weren’t expecting it at all!”, said Dr. Evelyn Telfer who is a reproductive biologist professor at the University of Edinburgh and also in charge of the study. “Their tissue sample resembled more that of a pre-adolescent girl rather than that of an adult or of a person very close to adulthood. It’s not only the quantity of the follicles but also the fact that they were organized in groups. In other words they presented qualities that we usually observe in young ovaries”.
Dr. Evelyn Telfer added that it is not yet known how this specific chemotherapy can cause this outcome. They speculate that it might initially wipe out the mature follicles and then activates the cell population mechanisms in order to create new ones.
The research continues.
Researchers are trying to determine if the new follicles can produce new and healthy eggs capable of being fertilized.
It is estimated that when a girl is born she has about 1-2 million follicles that mature extremely fast as she grows up. In puberty, she is left with a reserve of about 400.000 follicles. During every menstrual cycle, about 1000 of them mature but from those, only one can produce a mature egg. By the time she reaches the age of menopause (45 – 55 years old), only a very few of them will still remain. In other words, her ovarian reserve will be depleted.
You can read more useful information on Egg Freezing and Cryopreservation here /a> and also here.
Source: tanea.gr
Dimitris Papadopoulos, Clinical Embryologist, REA Maternity Hospital
