Unexplained infertility is a frustrating diagnosis. The usual diagnostic work up has no “AHA!!”  moment and clear treatment plan. In spite of no obvious problems, there’s still no pregnancy month after month. Scientist Dr Megan Lloyd and her team announced the discovery of an antibody against the glycoprotein zona pellucida 3 (ZP3) which induces sterility [...]

One of my readers had some questions about egg vacuoles in IVF so I thought I’d touch on this topic today.  Vacuoles look like roundish areas in the egg. They can be large or small, many or few. Sometimes they can be mistaken for pronuclei but unlike pronuclei, vacuoles are clear inside, and don’t have [...]

Recently one of my readers had a question that I think many patients who go through IVF may have. She wanted to understand what blastocyst grading means in terms of embryo quality and then, obviously the implications for her  chances of pregnancy. Her question was: ” I just had two expanded blastocysts transferred on day [...]

We’ve all heard the expression, “You are what you eat”, meaning that good dietary habits will positively influence how you look and feel overall. But did you expect that the food you eat might have an effect on your sperm? Two new studies presented at this week’s American Society for the Study of Reproduction (ASRM)’s [...]

One of the routine questions that patients get asked when they submit a semen sample for analysis is “Have you taken any medications in the last 60 days?” The 60 days is relevant because it takes around 60-70 days for a sperm cell to be produced and so exposures that occurred two months earlier may [...]

Most couples struggling with infertility are presented with the results of a semen analysis report at some point in their journey. The male partner produces a sample, usually by masturbation, either at home or at the clinic and the semen sample is analyzed under the microscope. Most people are familiar with sperm count, semen volume [...]

Infertility is too often thought of as a “woman’s” problem, but  the truth of the matter is that without sperm to tango with, the egg is pretty insufficient to make a baby. The good news for men is that today’s male infertility toolbox contains more diagnosis and treatment tools than what was available in their [...]

Preferring a child of one gender or another is as old as sex itself. Old wives tales abound of various methods to ensure that your child is a boy (or a girl).  For prospective parents, determining your child’s gender was believed to be dependent on what you ate, what you drank, what positions you used [...]

Apparently, “Boris” loves INVOcell and reads my blog. I got his irate feedback the other day on my previous post “INVOcell: Not nearly IVF” and he wanted me to respond to his comment. “Boris”  doesn’t identify himself or his interest in INVOcell but he does appear to have a personal stake in the success of [...]

There should be a limit to what women are expected to subject themselves to for pregnancy. In my opinion, INVOcell is one thing too much. INVOcell is a device that is marketed as a low cost alternative to IVF even though  it appears to have none of the advantages and several disadvantages in efficacy and [...]