fertility treatment

• Contraceptives


  Used to reduce fertility and prevent pregnancy
• Infertile women


  • Want to have a baby
• Increasing fertility using hormones

  1. Give FSH to stimulate ovaries to mature eggs

  2. Give LH to stimulate ovulation
• FSH


  Follicle stimulating hormone
• LH


  Luteinizing hormone
• Low FSH levels


  Eggs don't mature properly
• IVF (In Vitro Fertilization)

  1. Stimulate egg maturation with FSH and LH

  2. Collect eggs

  3. Fertilize eggs with sperm

  4. Incubate fertilized eggs to form embryos

  5. Transfer embryos to uterus
• In vitro


  Outside the body, e.g. in a test tube
• In vivo


  Inside the body
• ICSI


  Intracytoplasmic sperm injection - sperm injected directly into egg
• Advances in microscope technology have improved IVF success and allowed genetic testing of embryos
• Genetic testing of embryos could potentially lead to 'designer babies' but this is currently illegal in the UK and most other countries