Simple Test Could Calculate Number Of Fertility Years

Main Category: Fertility
Article Date: 06 May 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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Women planning to delay motherhood could soon be able to take a blood test to predict their age at menopause to help them estimate how many years of fertility they have left.

Queensland University of Technology statistician Professor Malcolm Faddy, from QUT's School of Mathematical Sciences, is co-author of a study with researchers from the Netherlands that looked at the relationship of a reproductive hormone and menopause.

Professor Faddy said there was a wide variation in the age of menopause which for most women occurred between 40 and 60 years of age.

"But we know from studies of natural populations where the timing of having children is not influenced by contraception, that natural fertility drops off some 10 years before menopause," Professor Faddy said.

"This means that with the variation in menopausal age some women could become infertile as early as their 30s.

"It is then difficult to become pregnant without artificial intervention."

He said the study used the fact that anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) levels in the blood reflected the number of small follicles present in a woman's ovaries.

"These follicles are responsible for the supply of eggs for ovulation, and depletion of the stock of follicles leads to menopause.

"The study measured AMH levels in blood samples from a group of healthy fertile women, using the data to determine a model of age-related change in AMH levels.

"We then used this model to predict age at menopause via a critical AMH threshold level.

"Prediction of menopause has been problematic since it is retrospectively defined as the cessation of menstruation for at least 12 consecutive months.

"But with prediction it becomes possible to forecast when natural fertility is in decline."

Professor Faddy said that after validation of the model, this work could lead to a blood test which assessed the level of AMH being used to estimate the number of years of fertility left.

He said prediction for women younger than 30 remains problematic because AMH levels did not show much of a decline till after this age.

He said the researchers in the Netherlands were following a group of women to test the validity of the predictions.

The study will be published in the June edition of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Queensland University of Technology