Childless women in their thirties should freeze their eggs, say experts

Childless women in their early thirties should consider freezing their eggs as an “insurance policy” against future fertility problems, experts today suggested.

American scientists said egg freezing would be “cost effective” for the average woman who delays motherhood until her mid to late thirties and beyond. And it would give older women a “better chance” of conceiving than trying to become pregnant naturally at 40.

Dr Kate Devine, clinical fellow at the US National Institute of Health, said egg freezing was never a cast-iron guarantee of conception but added: “I would recommend it if you’re in your early thirties, there’s no one on the horizon and you don’t think there’s any chance of having children in the next four or five years.v“I see a lot of people doing it in their early thirties, and that’s probably the optimum age. If you don’t have a partner you might want to preserve your fertility in time and wait to find Mr Right. If you’re in a high-stress career, working hard, I think that’s a reasonable time to start to do it.” She said: “Obviously some women will never need to use their eggs. This is just an insurance policy of sorts.”

Although the technique is widely available it can cost as much as £5,000. Yet experts said it had improved so much, and that IVF remains so expensive, that egg freezing is a reasonable option for those wishing to have children later in life. There is a 70 per cent chance of a baby if women freeze their eggs in their early thirties, dropping to 50 per cent at the age of 38. This compares to the 36 per cent success rate of conceiving via IVF at age 41. "Up to the age of 38 the most cost-effective strategy is to freeze your eggs at that age," Dr Devine concluded.

Dagan Wells, a fellow in obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Oxford, said the recommendation made sense: "If you do try to start a family in your late 30s it’s probably going to be one or two years before you realise that’s a problem and by that point your chances of successful IVF are really low. If people plan ahead ... then they will have some degree of fertility preservation."

In the UK, the cost of removing and freezing a woman’s eggs can be up to £5,000 plus an annual fee of £200 for each year that they are stored. Despite this, the US experts said several rounds of IVF at the age of 40 could cost double this amount. Yet the process of “banking” eggs requires women to take high doses of hormones to stimulate their ovaries. It is a relatively new procedure in Britain and it is estimated that less than ten babies have been born from frozen eggs since the first in 2002. It is usually reserved for use by women undergoing cancer treatment, which can damage fertility.

But a recent survey by Red magazine showed one fifth of 28 to 45-year-old women had considered freezing their eggs for later use. However Josephine Quintavalle, of the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, warned that egg freezing can occasionally cause fatal blood clots: “Egg harvesting is a very uncomfortable invasive process, and can actually go seriously wrong. "Keep searching is my advice and spend the money on finding Mr Right rather than enriching the IVF providers."

Yahoo Lifestyle

Please search