Newsgroups: biz.americast.samples
From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Subject: \HD Donor eggs do it
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 09:14:26 EDT

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\SE A;NATION
\HD Donor eggs do it
\SH Older women bearing babies
\BY Joyce Price
\CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Donated embryos are making it possible for 40- and 50-year-old women to
ignore the ticking of their biological clocks.

A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California has
found that "age-related decline in female fertility may be reversed" in
women who are implanted with donor eggs from younger women.

Women in their 40s and early 50s using donor eggs "can conceive, carry
and give birth to infants with success rates similar to those of women in
their 20s and 30s using assisted reproductive methods," the study's author,
Dr.  Mark V.  Sauer, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at
USC, said yesterday.

The data show that many women "regardless of age may safely achieve
pregnancy long after the ovary ceases to provide reproductive function,"
Dr.  Sauer said.

The study is reported in this week's issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association.

The researchers compared rates of conception and delivery by women over
40 given donor eggs with those of women in two other groups:
* Women under 40 who used donor eggs.

* Women over 40 who underwent standard in-vitro fertilization with
their own eggs.

When donor eggs are used, they are transferred from a young healthy
woman and fertilized in a test-tube by sperm from the husband of the
infertile woman wishing to get pregnant, according to Dr.  John Paulson, a
reproductive endocrinologist at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine in
Annandale.

Of the 65 women over 40 who received a donated egg in the USC study, 27
became pregnant.  All but four carried their infants to term, meaning over
36 weeks.  One fetal death occurred at 40 weeks' gestational age "without
apparent cause," the researchers said.

The success of egg donation was measured by a formula that compared the
number of pregnancies or deliveries with the number of embryo transfer
attempts.

"Normally, about a third of women attempting pregnancy this way
succeed," Dr.  Sauer said.  The study found a 30 percent to 34 percent
success rate for women both over and under 40. The success rate with
standard in-vitro fertilization was 9 percent.

"Embryo donations triple - even quadruple" - the birth rates that would
normally be expected among women over 40, he said.

Of seven women over the age of 50 who tried to become pregnant, two -
ages 51 and 52 - succeeded and delivered.  In a telephone interview
yesterday, Dr.  Sauer said the research is continuing and a 55-year-old
woman using a donated egg will deliver an infant next month.

Births among the older women tended to be uncomplicated, although
Caesarean sections were performed in 20 of the 27 cases.

Seven of the pregnancies - or 24 percent - were multiple births.

In their report, Dr.  Sauer and his associates, Dr.  Richard J.
Paulson and Dr.  Rogerio A.  Lobo, predict widespread interest in their
findings, given that about 19 percent of all American women are between the
ages of 45 and 64. "Many women within this age group are still very
interested in having a child" but have been excluded from "most traditional
infertility therapies because of their low probability for success," they
wrote.

This study, Dr.  Sauer said, indicates these older women "may be ideal
candidates for oocyte [egg] donation . . . if they are willing to use
third-party genetic material."

An accompanying editorial in JAMA described the findings as the "new
frontier of reproductive age" but cautioned that there are some
"significant concerns associated with this application of donated oocytes."

The author of the editorial, Dr.  Martin M.  Quigley of the Northeast
Regional Center for Infertility & In-vitro Fertilization in Beachwood,
Ohio, noted that donated eggs already are "among the most successful of the
assisted reproductive technologies" in use today.  But he pointed out that
"only a limited number can be recovered at one time."

Dr.  Quigley predicted that using this treatment "to establish
pregnancies in 'older' women who may be postmenopausal or infertile"
because of an "age-related decrease in oocyte quality" may become "so
successful . . . that consumer demand may outstrip our ability to provide
the necessary oocyte donors."


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