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How to get pregnant? Relax… for a 160% greater chance.

Many women asking how to get pregnant have been told to just stop stressing about it. It’s now an idea that doctors at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Atlanta, have been presented. Backed by research, stress management may become part of a holistic approach to infertility.

Alice Domar presented her findings, discovered that women who participated in a stress management program while having a second round of fertility treatment had a 160 percent greater pregnancy rate than women getting IVF alone. Alice runs a fertility center in Boston and also works at Harvard Medical School

97 patients at the clinic took part in a 10-session mind and body program while undergoing treatments of in-vitro fertilization.

The program had no effect on how many women conceived during the first try, Domar told the meeting, with 43 percent of the women getting pregnant.

However, women who failed the first time and were having a second attempt, 52 percent who took part in the mind and body program became pregnant. This compared to only 20 percent of those who did not.

Alice Domar said in a statement: “Reproductive health experts have long wondered about the impact that stress may have on fertility, thus impeding a woman’s ability to conceive,

“This study shows that stress management may improve pregnancy rates, minimizing the stress of fertility management itself, improving the success rates of IVF procedures, and ultimately, helping to alleviate the emotional burden for women who are facing challenges trying to conceive.”

         

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IVF hope increased as new screening test doubles conception rate

The odds for IVF success are currenty less than one in four procedures and with around 37,000 woman in Britain every year undergoing IVF, this will be welcome news.

British scientists have developed a new method, which screens embryos for genetic defects and greatly increases the chance of women becoming pregnant, even in their late thirties. Genetic screening also substantially cuts the risk of conditions like Down’s syndrome.

To date more than 20 babies have been born after using the technique and the wishes of the scientists involved are that it could eventually become standard practice on the National Health Service.

One in six couples faces problems conceiving. However, with this new method, experts achieved a birth in four out of five attempts in older women whose previous IVF attempts had been unsuccessful.

“Astonishing”, was how the team, from Oxford, hailed their results. However they admitted they used the candidates most likely to succeed anyway for the treatment, (The method requires women to produce embryos which progressed to the five day stage).

Stuart Lavery, consultant gynaecologist at the IVF unit at Hammersmith Hospital, said the latest results were still ‘quite amazing when compared to conventional approaches’.

This technique, by the Reprogenetics UK laboratory in Oxford for the Colorado Centre for Reproductive Medicine, took 42 women with an average age of 39 who had endured at least one failed IVF attempt.

The experts tested five-day-old embryos for chromosome abnormalities which could prevent them implanting in the womb, or cause miscarriage.

More than twice as many embryos ended in a pregnancy using the technique compared to a control group of similar patients. In addition, multiple embryos were transferred at the same time.

Although some women miscarried, the birth rate was 80 per cent, compared to 60 per cent in the control group.

Allan Pacey, secretary of the British Fertility Society, said: “Embryology is really crying out for something like this.

“We really haven’t moved on from the science of just looking down the microscope and seeing if an embryo looks good on the basis of some rather loose criteria.

“This is very exciting technology but we do need proper randomised control trials to see if it does what says on tin.”

The screening technique is currently too new to be considered for funding by the NHS and is only offered privately in a handful of IVF clinics in Britain, costing up to £11,000.

The findings will be presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) conference in Atlanta this week.

The first baby was born in Britain using a similar technique last month, after his parents underwent 13 failed IVF attempts.