Expert warns IVF reliance ‘risky’ for older women

WOMEN are being lulled into a false sense of security that IVF treatment will enable them to become middle-age mothers, a world leading expert has warned.

Professor Cornelis Lambalk, editor-in-chief of the influential medical journal Human Reproduction, said delaying parenthood as a result was risky.

He made his comments in response to a recent Australian study, published in Human Reproduction, which found use of ‘assisted reproductive technology’ (ART) in women over 40 has risen by over half in the last decade.

‘ART’ is an umbrella term for medical techniques that aid conception, including in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

In the UK, the number of IVF treatments given to women over 40 rose by 41 per cent between 2009 and 2019, from around 10,200 IVF ‘cycles’ to 14,400.

Prof Lambalk, a gynaecologist at Amsterdam University Medical Centres in the Netherlands, said while ART was ‘very useful for many fertility disorders’, its limited effectiveness meant it was ‘not clearly the treatment of choice for the natural age-related decline in fertility’.