IVF couples wasting thousands of pounds on drugs

13 April 2012

Childless couples undergoing fertility treatment are wasting thousands of pounds on unnecessary drugs with potentially harmful side effects, according to new research.

A course of hormone drugs to help a woman get pregnant using IVF can cost between £3,500 and £7,000, with many women having two or three cycles before they conceive.

But scientists now believe that small doses of these drugs - which stimulate ovaries into producing lots of eggs - can work as effectively as the expensive high doses that are more commonly given.

The drugs can also cause damaged embryos and side effects to the mother such as mood swings, bloating and a potentially fatal condition known as ovarian hyper-stimulation.

The research, revealed at a London fertility conference, has prompted calls for a more natural method of IVF to be adopted.

The study - to be published soon in the Lancet - looked at 400 couples undergoing IVF treatment. It discovered that in a one year period there were the same number of births generated whether doctors used high stimulation of the ovaries or mild stimulation, low use of drugs.

Specialists attending last week's conference were told that women should no longer automatically be given high doses of hormone drugs as part of their treatment.

The World Congress on Natural Cycle/Minimal Stimulation IVF has been called to promote natural IVF and minimal use of drugs to help women have babies.

Professor Bert Fauser - who carried out the study - said: 'Women are paying a high price financially and they are risking their health and psychological well being when low doses therapy will work for the majority of patients.'

A second study by Professor Fauser's team at the University of Utrecht found that high stimulation of the ovaries with hormone drugs created more chromosomally damaged embryos compared to women on mild stimulation treatment.

The discovery explains why so many fertility treatments fail, with thousands of women going through several expensive and painful cycles of treatment in the hope of having a child.

It will add to worries that some genetic changes may occur that result in children being born with abnormalities.

Professor Fauser said: 'Women are paying a lot of money to have a chromosomally damaged embryo implanted that might not develop into a pregnancy.

'It doesn't make sense when you can get pregnant on low dose therapy which doesn't cause damage to the embryo.' Bonnie Prim, a 32 year-old mother from Swindon, struggled for five years to get naturally pregnant with her husband Reg, 42, before turning to fertility doctors.

She ended up only paying hundreds of pounds for fertility treatment that could have cost thousands.

She said: 'My consultant wanted to use standard high doses of IVF but I'd read up about more natural approaches using low doses of hormones or natural cycle IVF where doctors plot your cycle and work out the best time to collect an egg.

'I went to a London clinic and had natural IVF. The only treatment I had was a drug to induce the egg to drop from the fallopian tube. It worked first time and we now have a nine month old daughter called Jasmine.

'It was really stress free and the great thing is that it only cost us £420.

'We'd saved up seven thousand pounds to pay for at least two courses of treatment. We celebrated by buying ourselves a small motor boat. We were delighted I got pregnant so quickly and with minimal expense.'

Other studies discussed at the conference also pointed to lower drug doses.

A review of more than 1,000 women having IVF treatment showed that a pregnancy rate of 40 per cent was achieved for women who didn't use any drugs as part of their IVF treatment - the same rate as women who used high doses of drugs to stimulate egg production.

Low dose babies were also on average four ounces heavier - regarded as a positive health sign.

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