By Jacqueline Howard
Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh, a San Francisco-based reproductive endocrinologist, sees it almost everyday in her practice.
Women come into the fertility specialist’s office fearful and tearful that they may never have children, she said. The results of their follicle stimulating hormone(FSH) and anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) blood tests — used to gauge fertility and how many eggs a woman has — are not promising. Some women lose hope.
Yet “a hormone level can never tell you that you can or cannot get pregnant,” Eyvazzadeh said, adding that there is more to fertility than a patient’s FSH and AMH levels. Higher FSH, as well as lower AMH levels, are associated with reduced fertility.
However, a new study published in the medical journal JAMA on Tuesday suggests that having high FSH and low AMH levels — which typically indicate a low ovarian reserve or egg count — might not be significantly tied to reduced fertility after all.
The ability of those biomarkers to predict a woman’s reproductive potential appear to be uncertain, according to the study, of which Eyvazzadeh was not involved.
“Our findings challenge the clinical assumption that diminished ovarian reserve is a cause of infertility, but these findings are important…
