Sign up FAST! Login

Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs


Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs | Science | The Guardian

Ovarian biopsies taken from young women who had been given a particular chemotherapy drug showed that the tissue appeared to have formed new eggs. Photograph: Science Picture Co/Getty Images/Science Faction

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/07/evidence-suggests-womens-ovaries-can-grow-new-eggs

Stashed in: Women, Awesome, Medicine, Cancer

To save this post, select a stash from drop-down menu or type in a new one:

The small study, involving cancer patients, showed that ovarian biopsies taken from young women who had been given a chemotherapy drug had a far higher density of eggs than healthy women of the same age.

Prof Evelyn Telfer, who led the work at the University of Edinburgh, said: “This was something remarkable and completely unexpected for us. The tissue appeared to have formed new eggs. The dogma is that the human ovary has a fixed population of eggs and that no new eggs form throughout life.”

Her team initially set out to investigate why the drug, called ABVD, does not cause fertility problems, unlike many forms of chemotherapy.

Although the research is promising, Telfer warned against the apparent eagerness of some fertility clinics to offer novel treatments before the basic science is well understood.

“There’s so much we don’t know about the ovary,” she said. “We have to be very cautious about jumping to clinical applications.”

The findings have been greeted with a mixture of excitement and scepticism.

Astonishing discovery. 

"Acronym: ABVD

Most often associated with treatment of Hodgkin's Lymphoma."

normalized-tmp-57f8a71374003

http://chemocare.com/chemotherapy/acronyms/abvd.aspxy

Nothing in that description suggests that it helps ovaries create new eggs. 

ABVD is not "a drug" as it's be lead to be in these articles, and THEY ARE NOT meant to be treated lightly. (Following a link given: "Your nurse will give you doxorubicin (a red fluid) as an injection directly into your vein with a drip (infusion) to flush it through. After this, they give you vinblastine as a drip over 5–10 minutes. 

Then they will give you dacarbazine as a drip over at least 30 minutes. After this, you will have bleomycin either as a drip over about 30 minutes or as a slow injection into your vein, with a drip to flush it through.")

Thanks for pointing that out, Marlene. 

Sounds like an awful process but perhaps it can be improved upon.

You May Also Like: