‘Kiss hormone’ cuts the risk of side effects for women on IVF

WOMeN having IVF could soon receive a milder, less dangerous form of treatment using the ‘kiss hormone’.

British doctors have discovered a method that mimics the body’s own way of ripening eggs, lowering the risk of life-threatening complications.

Normal IVF can leave women with massively enlarged ovaries and at risk of blood clots and fluid build-up in the lungs.

Kisspeptin, a natural hormone used to stimulate a woman’s eggs, has been found to be kinder for patients at risk of this ‘ovarian overstimulation’. The hormone is called the kiss hormone because it was discovered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, home to the chocolate firm that makes Hershey’s Kisses.

The Imperial College London study of 60 women at high risk of ovarian overstimulation found none ended up with a severe form of the complication after being given the drug. This compares with an expected rate of 10 to 15 per cent using conventional drugs.

Lead author Dr Ali Abbara said: ‘Kisspeptin works naturally in the body to produce the hormones for a woman to grow the eggs she needs to become pregnant.

‘Unlike the most commonly used drug, kisspeptin is much safer.’

Women having fertility treatment need to produce more than their natural one egg a month, to boost their chances of fertilisation with their partner’s sperm.

But the main existing drug, human chorionic gonadotropin, causes around one woman in ten to suffer moderate to severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS).

Kisspeptin was first tried on women to see if it would work three years ago by researchers led by Imperial endocrinologist Professor Waljit Dhillo.

It has been found to cause very

‘Works naturally in the body’

few cases of OHSS, which could make IVF less scary and painful for many women.

The Imperial researchers have seen 63 healthy babies born to women using the ‘kiss hormone’.

Crucially, they have discovered that two injections of kisspeptin work better to produce eggs than one injection. This raised the percentage of women producing a target number of eggs from 45 per cent to 71 per cent.

Currently women at risk of OHSS are given a synthetic version of a gonadotropin hormone, but this is thought to reduce pregnancy rates.