Tuesday 7 September 2010

Positive new research on DHEA

It's a subject that has come up at lot recently at the fertility support groups I visit - the use of DHEA to improve the chances of IVF success for women who have a low ovarian reserve.

DHEA is an anti-ageing vitamin supplement and women in the UK have been buying it online - and reporting that their response during IVF treatment has been much improved. It's quite a hot topic amongst the couples at the groups, and more and more have been using it recently.

Now, scientists in Israel have looked more closely at the effects of the supplement - and they found that women who took it were three times more likely to get pregnant than those who didn't. Apparently, the women who'd taken DHEA were also more likely to have a healthy pregnancy and delivery.

It isn't clear exactly what DHEA does to women to make them more fertile, and many consultants in the UK are reluctant to recommend it without larger scale trials - however, if you've got a low ovarian reserve and are having IVF, it's definitely worth looking into.

There's more detail on the research, which has been published in Human Reproduction, here

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