Good news to married overseas Filipino couples having difficulty to have a child. As the in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology continues to take great strides into the future, recent research suggests revolutionary advancements that will further strengthen the success rate of pregnancy.
In the near future, OFW couples opting for IVF can look forward to infertility treatments that will be more affordable, non-invasive and with the help of fewer drugs. Older women, too, will stand a better chance of successful pregnancy.
Other possibilities include growing eggs in a lab, and freezing ovarian tissues instead of eggs for better results. With further inroads into genetic testing including comprehensive methods, such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), the success rate of IVF seems to be on the rise.
This was highlighted at Bourn Hall Fertility Centre, Dubai, on the recent World IVF Day, which also marks the birthday of Louis Brown, the first baby born through In Vitro Fertilisation at Bourn Hall Fertility Clinic, UK, 39 years ago.
Speaking at the event, Dr David Robertson, Group Medical Director, Bourn Hall International, focused on the emerging technologies in IVF. The event also celebrated the various milestones in IVF technology which was pioneered by Bourn Hall Clinic founders, Robert Edwards – who won a Nobel Prize in Medicine – and Patrick Steptoe.
“The future of IVF holds some very exciting prospects and we are looking at some great technologies which will hopefully materialise soon,” said Dr Robertson. “There are treatments such as In Vitro Maturation (IVM), where immature eggs are harvested with minimal medication, and matured in the lab, reducing or putting an end to the need for hormone injections.
“Similarly, there are prospects of freezing ovarian tissue prior to fertility declining, which could be then be transplanted back into a women’s body to resolve normal ovarian function. Moreover, pilot studies have been conducted to ‘re-energize the battery’ of aging egg cells in older women which could potentially lead them to have successful pregnancies.”
Currently, thousands of babies are born through IVF procedures every year with the global market value of IVF anticipated to reach $27 billion by 2020. In the UAE, the figures will reportedly escalate to $1.5 billion in the next three years.
