A study by Dutch fertility experts has found evidence that the number of eggs retrieved from a woman after stimulating her ovaries for IVF is likely to predict whether or not she will have an early menopause.
They studied a group of 32 women who had reached menopause between the ages of 31 and 46 and individually matched them with 150 controls who were still menstruating at the ages that the 32 cases became postmenopausal.
The study is believed to be the first to have looked at a possible connection between the age of menopause and the number of eggs a woman produces for IVF. It was carried out as part of nation-wide Dutch cohort study into ovarian stimulation and the risk of subsequent gynaecological diseases.
Dr Evelien de Boer of the Netherlands Cancer Institute told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Bologna, Italy, today: (Wednesday 28 June) "Our data suggest that women with a low number of eggs harvested at their first IVF treatment will become postmenopausal at an earlier age than normal.
"At this stage we can only say that a lower than average number of eggs is linked to an early menopause. We cannot predict that the fewer the eggs the earlier the menopause: we would need to expand our study group to answer that question and we are still trying to include more women."
For the moment the results are more of biological importance than having clinical implications. These results support one of the concepts of reproductive ageing; that age at menopause is determined by the number of remaining follicles in the ovaries. Dr de Boer did not see a reason to change IVF policy as a result of the finding.
" Most women who undergo IVF already have a short gap between IVF cycles. At the most it does not seem advisable to delay the subsequent IVF attempt for more than one year," she said.
Note: programme number: O-195
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