Anyone mid 40's tried alternatives before DE and had success?

[Hopecontinues]

Hi,

I've just had a failed natural supported cycle and I told myself I will go for DE next, but can't help wondering if I should try ovarian rejuvenation or cytoplasmic transfer or both? Does anyone have experience of these?

Thanks

[JoyfulStar]

Hello Hopecontinues, I am currently 44 and 32 weeks pregnant. I got pregnant a few weeks before my 44th birthday.

While I cannot comment on the 2 procedures you have mentioned, thought you may be interested in how I got success. My consultant at the time recommended having multiple cycles to take advantage of my age.

I think the key to my personal success was back to back IVF cycles with no transfer till the the third and final cycle. As I was given a less than 10 percent chance, I think having several stimulations back to back did bring out the one good egg. With each cycle of stimulation, the number of eggs retrieved increased. It was not smooth sailing but it worked overall. Feel free to check my profile and previous posts.

This may not be right for everyone but I would definitely recommend this for anyone over 40 thinking of doing IVF as time is not on our side.

All the best and I will be rooting for you 🙏🏾

[Hopecontinues in reply to JoyfulStar]

Hi, Congratulations, that's great news. I tried back to back, but had OHSS twice, so had to switch to a more natural cycle. So difficult to know what to do now.

Thanks for responding.

X

[Georgejohn in reply to JoyfulStar]

Hi I have done 2 cycles of ivf with no results you talking about say 3 months of injections with no egg retrieval or transfer.

[Hopecontinues in reply to Georgejohn]

That's really tough. What did your doctor say?

[Georgejohn in reply to Hopecontinues]

Go on Wed too find out , 1st cycle 4 eggs retrieved all fertilised but only one went to blastocyst, 2nd cycle similar amount of follicles but only one egg retrieved but didn't fertiluze. Was on a higher dose of medication 450.

[Hopecontinues in reply to Georgejohn]

Good luck for Wednesday. It's such a brutal process, I hope this time it works for you. I had 19 eggs first time, buy only one fertilised and made an early blastocyst, so no grading, but still transferred after being frozen as I had OHSS. 2nd time 25 eggs, 14 fertilised, all still growing in day 3 and then day 5 I only had 3 early blastocysts left. One was actually a day 6. Everyone, they say the quality looks good, but they're not dividing quick enough, hence me looking at alternative treatments. Let us know how it goes.

X

[JoyfulStar in reply to Georgejohn]

No, the plan was to bank embryos following egg retrieval after each cycle but no transfer until after the 3rd cycle.

I did not make very many embryos but I think the accumulative effect of the drugs meant I produced more eggs after each cycle which meant by the end of the 3rd cycle, I got 15 eggs and because I was given a 10% chance, I believe that one good quality egg was coaxed out. Feel free to check out my previous posts and profile

All the best with your future cycles

[Hidden]

How did your embryos develop? What transfers have you had? (3 day 5 day etc?)

I am 44 and have had 6 OE rounds with mixed success but no baby in the end. I mentioned both those procedures to my consultant and he said whilst they can enhance things they can't fundamentally fix things and if my eggs were old eggs it was unlikely that anything would be rejuvenated that well to make a huge difference and given the cost it would make more sense to invest in DE (if I was open to it) because this would fundamentally make a much bigger % impact on the likelihood of getting pregnant x

[Hopecontinues in reply to Hidden]

Hi, I've had 3 ivf rounds. 1st round only 1 early blastocyst. 2nd produced 2 5day early blastocysts and 1 6day early blastocyst. 3rd round 2 embryos which they said were the highest quality, I.e. no fragmentation, but slow growing, so they transferred day 2.

The studies used to say your eggs are your eggs, but now they think you can rejuvenate them, but not enough studies have been done. Incidentally they're looking for people to volunteer for a study group in Greece. If you end up in the placebo group, they'll give you the actual treatment after the study.

This is all really new to me and I'm just exploring before DE. What's your next step?

X

[BBHH1]

If you produce a lot of eggs at 40, that is not that old really, I don’t see how DE would help you. I would do an extensive work up on male factor and other female infertility factors such as immunologic, hormonal etc. wish you luck.

I don’t think ovarian rejuvenation would help you. DHEA and COQ10 should!

[Hopecontinues in reply to BBHH1]

I tried DHEA, but my clinic made me stop taking it because they think I might have PCOS and I would already have too many androgens. I've just tested though and it was at the low end.

[BBHH1]

So I think you should look into all the hormones better. They should be able to help you!

[D38813]

I had ovarian rejuvenation in Greece. I didn’t want to waste time on the study as so paid for it. All it did for me was cause bleeding inside which meant I had to wait months for it to heal to try ivf. I’d made the mistake of doing this before ivf and ended up with less eggs than I was showing before rejuvenation. After the rejuvenation the drs talked about my amh increasing by 0.5. A lot lower than they pitch before the procedure.

[Hopecontinues in reply to D38813]

Oh jeez, that does not sound good. I had internal bleeding from egg collection in Greece and it was extremely painful. I'm still recovering and actually can't believe they went ahead with the transfer. I hope you have made a full recovery now and have total sympathy for what you went through.

[Miracolo2 in reply to D38813]

Hello, do you mind me asking what technic they used and which clinic you used?

[Terrier15]

Hello, I had Ovarian Rejuvenation done at a clinic in Greece and then returned 9 months later for IVF which was unsuccessful. My AMH did improve after the Ovarian Rejuvenation but I'm not sure that this improves the quality of the eggs. The eggs that they collected were not good enough for fertilization and were disgarded. At the follow appointment before I ;eft Greece, the pressure they put on me to use DE was awful. They got me on my own away from my partner and applied a lot of pressure, for example telling me it was the only was to keep my partner as he wanted a baby and there was no other way. They wanted me to agree to DE there and then before discussing it with my partner. My partner was horrified at they way I was treated, he felt that DE should have been discussed with both of us.I now wish that we had not bothered going to Greece and had just gone straight ahead with DE. If you do go ahead with Ovarian Rejuvenation please choose your clinic carefully as I would hate for anybody else to feel the way I was made to feel. I go to know another lady that was having the precedure done at the clinic and she was made to feel the same way.

[Hopecontinues in reply to Terrier15]

Thank you so much for your response. I don't know anyone that this has worked for, so it's a bit off putting. I'm sorry you had a bad experience in Greece. Can I ask when you had thus treatment?

[Terrier15 in reply to Hopecontinues]

I had the treatment in January 2020, covid did delay when I could go back for IVF, but I don't think that made a lot of difference.

[Miracolo2 in reply to Terrier15]

Hello do you mind me asking what technic they used and which clinic you used?

[Terrier15 in reply to Miracolo2]

I have sent you a pm.

[Hopecontinues in reply to Terrier15]

Are there lots of technics?

[Terrier15 in reply to Hopecontinues]

This is the only one I know about

[articsnowfox]

You should try DHEA - I took it for 3 months and had my baby at the age of 44 (43 when I got pregnant). Same for the friend who took my left over pills who was also 43 and with a history of recurrent miscarriage. There is really good evidence that it works: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/313...

[Miracolo2 in reply to articsnowfox]

Hello, did you have any tests done before using DHEA?

[nT455 in reply to articsnowfox]

Hi I'm also thinking of taking Dhea but wondering what tests I need to do beforehand.

[articsnowfox in reply to nT455]

I did get tested for it and my levels were a bit low, hence my doc put me on it at a low dose - but actually i increased the dose myself after reading all the evidence of live birth due to a dose of 75 mg/day. I found that my doc didn't really read up on medical literature all that much actually but she was quite open to any suggestions that I had. I don't think I told her I increased the dose though because I had already asked her to change a couple of other things about the cycle, and didn't want to push my luck, although actually I think it would have been fine in the end if I had showed her the evidence. If you look in the clinical trial analysis i posted above, what was more important was the patients' AMH levels. And in other studies, what was more important was age. If you go onto this website and search for DHEA and look for trials to do with IVF/infertility, you'll notice that in the inclusion criteria, DHEA levels are not mentioned. This is because they are not actually so important - if they were important they would be mentioned as an inclusion criterion: clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/resu...

[Hopecontinues in reply to articsnowfox]

I went on DHEA for 4 months, had a scan after 2 months which showed 30 follicles, I had 9 the year before, so quite a significant difference. The doctor then said I had PCOS because of the high number of follicles. 2 months after that I started with a new clinic who said to come off dhea immediately as it would impact egg quality. I had to wait 3 months before doing IVF so it was out of my system, although I also needed an op, so I had to wait anyway. Last week I did a home test to check dhea levels (wish I'd done this in the first place) and it was low, but within acceptable range. Now I am confused as to whether I should have stayed on it and whether I even have PCOS.

10 years from now artificial intelligence will be able to process all the different scenarios and give people specific plans. In the meantime we have to work it out ourselves via trial and error. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be a mum.

[articsnowfox in reply to Hopecontinues]

i am not sure about the correlation with PCOS, but it sounds like if you are open to DE, there is every chance you will be a mum. Other things to look into that seem to have at least some evidence to support them for older women are individualised oocyte retrieval and human growth hormone...good luck!

[Hopecontinues in reply to articsnowfox]

Looking into that those now. Thank you x

[Miracolo2]

Hello I am 44 and in the same situation. I am considering DE but I am not completely ready for it, and my husband is even less ready than me. We are considering going to Greece for another OE treatment before I completely give up on it, and also considering ovarian rejuvenation. We had a first consultation and the doctor confirmed what I have been reading about it recently which is that this treatment doesn't work for everyone. I don't think they know yet why, but definitely some people benefit from it whereas others don't. I also asked whether the doctor thought it could be good for me, and he said that he couldn't say it without at least doing a scan on me to understand better how my ovaries work.

[Hopecontinues in reply to Miracolo2]

It's so hard to know what to do. Ovarian rejuvenation takes months, then another heart wrenching ivf treatment v DE with higher odds. I hope it works out for you. Keep us informed.

[Miracolo2 in reply to Hopecontinues]

I was told that you can see the benefits immediately from the next month. I guess this applies to those for whom it works...in any case I don't have all this time unfortunately...so I don't know...

[Hopecontinues in reply to Miracolo2]

I watched a talk with an embryologist from Cyprus on ovarian rejuvenation. He said the egg cycle is 4 months, so they want to see the results after that. Then he talked about a patient who for some reason they did ivf 2 months after the procedure and she insisted on 3 embryos being put in as she didn't think it would work - she had full term triplets. They have adapted their technique over the last 4 years and they admitted that in the beginning the results weren't great, but it's getting better. Like others have said they don't know why the treatment works on some people and not on others.

They also do cytoplasmic transfer, which somebody on here told me about. I can't find any other clinic that does this, which is a bit alarming. They take part of your egg and part of a donor egg, so you keep some of your dna, but benefit from the donor egg. It only improves your chances by about 5%, but they normally have eggs left over from the donor which they can fertilise and freeze if you want to go straight to donor if it doesn't work.