OVARIAN TISSUE FREEZING COULD DELAY MENOPAUSE

For some women menopause is a welcomed stage of life, an end to menstruation and concerns about unplanned pregnancy with barely any symptoms. Other women dread the possibility of hot flushes, night sweats and emotional changes, as well as the end of child-bearing years. A group of scientist from Yale University, led by ovarian biologist Dr Kutluk Oktay, have looked at ways to delay menopause and avoid the drop in oestrogen levels. Oktay, who developed and performed the world’s first ovarian transplant procedure with cryopreserved tissue for a patient with a medical indication in 1999, sees a future in which healthy women could use this process of freezing tens of thousands of eggs within the ovarian tissue to stave off menopause.

“For the first time in medical history, we have the ability to potentially delay or eliminate menopause,” said Oktay. It’s a controversial issue with some people believing that such research could lead to life-changing benefits for women, while others consider menopause to be a biologically driven life stage that should not be pathologised by medical science.

Since ovarian biologist Oktay performed the first successful transplantation with cryopreserved tissue, ovarian tissue cryopreservation has been successfully used in cancer patients to preserve their fertility before their treatments, which can often permanently damage the egg reserve in the ovaries and trigger menopause.