New Research Just Released: Women Can Now Safely Postpone Motherhood Until Time Is Right

Main Category: Fertility
Article Date: 24 Jun 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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For women who would like to have children but who have not yet found the right partner or the right time in their lives, the door to a new option has opened wide.

Research now shows an advanced egg-freezing technique known as vitrification, a quick freezing method, is a safe means of preserving human eggs. In what researchers are calling the most exhaustive study yet on the subject, the new study revealed that children born after the freezing procedure appeared to be as healthy as those conceived normally or by in vitro fertilization (IVF).

As reported by the BBC last week, the study from McGill University in Montreal found specifically that the rate of birth defects among the 200 children conceived using vitrified eggs was 2.5 percent, roughly the same as in natural pregnancies and IVF.

Because women are born with a finite number of eggs and that supply declines with age, putting off motherhood often was not an option for women who knew they wanted to have children. But with the breakthrough egg freezing technology and the study's affirmation about the safety of that process, women now have a viable alternative.

"This simply confirms the potential of egg vitrification as the most consistent technology to apply for preservation of women's fertility," said Michael Tucker, PhD., scientific director at Georgia Reproductive Specialists. "That the abnormality rate is so low and entirely comparable to regular IVF is very gratifying, given all the fearful suggestions to the contrary made over the last decade since egg freezing started to take off."

Recognized in his field as one of the world's top 10 scientists in early human reproduction, Tucker is widely known and respected for his breakthrough achievements in assisted reproductive technology.

For further information about egg freezing, visit Georgia Reproductive Specialists at http://www.ivf.com.

About Georgia Reproductive Specialists

Atlanta-based Georgia Reproductive Specialists (GRS) applies medical science's most advanced fertility technologies to provide the highest standards of patient-centered, reproductive healthcare. The GRS staff focuses on providing individualized, innovative solutions for reproductive challenges and infertility, specializing in in vitro fertilization, intracytoplasmic sperm injection and other assisted reproductive technologies. For information, visit http://www.ivf.com.

Georgia Reproductive Specialists
http://www.ivf.com