Why women should freeze their ovaries

A new study claims that women should freeze their ovaries other than their eggs in order to protect their fertility.

According to the study, ovarian tissue contains immature eggs which when replaced in a woman’s body restarts her monthly cycle and releases estrogen thus allowing her to get pregnant naturally.

“The next frontier is to explore the procedure's potential in delaying childbearing among healthy women, not just cancer patients,” said Dr Fernanda Pacheco, the study’s co-author.

The study was conducted by the New York Medical College and found that almost 38 percent of women had a baby after freezing their ovarian tissue.

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US researchers examined every case of ovarian tissue freezing recorded between 1999 and October last year.

Further findings of the study revealed that women up to the age of 40 gave birth to 84 children after 309 freezing procedures.

Eight of those women had one child after freezing their ovarian tissue.

Two out of three women were successfully able to reverse their menopause or restore their reproductive function while close to two thirds were able to conceive naturally and a third needed IVF.

US researchers examined every case of ovarian tissue freezing recorded between 1999 and October last year.

Some of the reasons why women would be attracted to the procedure were that they could conceive naturally and there would be no need for Hormone Replacement Therapy whereby going through HRT is usually the case for women that undergo IVF.

"Ovarian tissue freezing is not science fiction but it is a long way off for non-medical reasons in Britain. Women considering freezing need to be well-informed so they can make informed decisions for themselves," said Dr Melanie Davies, a consultant gynecologist from the University College Hospital in London.

The procedure is only available to infertile women especially cancer patients, at the moment but experts want to also look into whether it will work on healthy women.

The frozen ovarian tissue in the study was kept for over two years and it was revealed that some procedures failed because some women were older.

The procedure is however still in the experimental phase at the moment.