Category Archives: Genetic Medicine

A friend whose brother was diagnosed with prostate cancer, had completed all his treatment and was declared free of the disease, asked me what he should do to keep himself healthy.

I was reminded of an excellent study from Bristol Medical School on the life-saving effect of exercise on prostate cancer. It examined the effect of 22 risk factors on prostate cancer and physical activity came out the most positive.

The research suggests men who keep active could cut their risk of prostate cancer by half. The good news is the exercise doesnt have to involve gym sessions or a 5km jog, it can be simply walking and gardening.

It turns out this kind of exercise has a much greater protective effect than previously thought.

Prostate cancer affects around 48,000 men in the UK each year and it kills almost a quarter of them. A team funded by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and Cancer Research UK measured physical activity among 79,148 men with prostate cancer and 61,106 without.

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

Play now

The study found that men who were most active reduced their risk of prostate cancer by 51% compared with those who were least active.

Dr Sarah Lewis, senior lecturer in genetic epidemiology at Bristol Medical School and lead author of the research, said: We would recommend that men are as physically active as they can be. Our evidence suggests being active will be beneficial in terms of their prostate cancer risk.

But it doesnt have to be vigorous activity or playing team sports, you just have to move about. Being active could be things such as gardening, walking or other activities that you can build into your daily routine.

This suggests that its being physically active thats leading to the huge benefits seen in reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

Dr Lewis added: This study is the largest-ever of its kind which uses

a relatively new method that compliments current observational research to discover what causes prostate cancer.

It suggests that there could be a larger effect of physical activity on prostate cancer than previously thought, so will hopefully encourage men to be more active.

In the UK, around one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime. The WCRF said this risk can drop to one in 12 for the men who are most physically active.

Dr Anna Diaz Font of the WCRF said: Up until now, there has only been limited evidence of an effect of physical activity on prostate cancer.

I will be passing on this message about taking exercise seriously to my friends brother.

Read more:
Dr Miriam Stoppard: Keeping active is the best prostate cancer medicine - Mirror Online

An EMT wearing protective equipment moves a patient into Elmhurst Hospital Center in the Queens borough of New York. Preliminary data suggest COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

An EMT wearing protective equipment moves a patient into Elmhurst Hospital Center in the Queens borough of New York. Preliminary data suggest COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on communities of color.

As data emerges on the spectrum of symptoms caused by COVID-19, it's clear that people with chronic health conditions are being hit harder.

While many people experience mild illness, 89% of people with COVID-19 who were sick enough to be hospitalized had at least one chronic condition. About half had high blood pressure and obesity, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And about a third had diabetes and a third had cardiovascular disease. So, what explains this?

"Obesity is a marker for a number of other problems," explains Dr. Aaron Carroll, a public health researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine. It's increasingly common for those who develop obesity to develop diabetes and other conditions, as well. So, one reason COVID-19 is taking its toll on people who have obesity is that their overall health is often compromised.

But does obesity specifically affect the immune system? Perhaps.

Prior research has shown that people with obesity are less protected by the flu vaccine. They tend to get sicker from the respiratory disease even if they've been immunized. In fact, researchers have found that as people gain excess weight, their metabolism changes and this shift can make the immune system less effective at fighting off viruses.

"What we see with obesity is that these [immune] cells don't function as well,' says Melinda Beck, a health researcher at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Basically, she explains, obesity throws off the fuel sources that immune cells need to function. "The [immune cells] are not using the right kinds of fuels," Beck says. And, as a result, the condition of obesity seems to "impair that critical immune response [needed] to deal with either the virus infection or [the ability] to make a robust response to a vaccine."

So this is one explanation as to why people with obesity seem more vulnerable to serious infection. But, there are many more questions about why some people are hit harder, including whether race is a factor.

The CDC found that 33% of people who've been hospitalized with COVID-19 are African American, yet only 13% of the U.S. population is African American. Some local communities have found a similar pattern in their data. Among the many (26) states reporting racial data on COVID-19, blacks account for 34% of COVID deaths, according to research from Johns Hopkins University.

This disproportionate toll can be partially explained by the fact that there's a higher prevalence of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes among African Americans compared with whites.

And as Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said last week at a White House coronavirus task force briefing, this crisis "is shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is, because yet again, when you have a situation like the coronavirus, [African Americans] are suffering disproportionately."

There are several factors, including some genetic ones, that may make African Americans more vulnerable to COVID-19. "There have been a few studies that have pointed to African Americans potentially having genetic risk factors that make them more salt-sensitive," says Ren Robinson, a professor of chemistry who researches chronic disease at Vanderbilt University. This may increase the likelihood of high blood pressure, which, in turn, is linked to more serious forms of COVID-19. "It could be a contributing factor," she says, but there are likely multiple causes at play.

Another issue to consider, she says, may be high stress levels. She says when a person experiences racial discrimination, it can contribute to chronic stress. She points to several studies that link discrimination and stress to higher levels of inflammation among black adults. "And chronic stress can make one more vulnerable to infection because it can lower your body's ability to fight off an infection," she says.

Chronic stress is linked to poverty so this could be a risk factor for low-income communities. In fact, research has shown that people who report higher levels of stress are more likely to catch a cold, when exposed to a virus, compared with people who are not stressed.

According to a new survey from Pew Research Center, health concerns about COVID-19 are much higher among Hispanics and blacks in the U.S. While 18% of white adults say they're "very concerned" that they will get COVID-19 and require hospitalization, 43% of Hispanic respondents and 31% of black adults say they're "very concerned" about that happening.

And other aspects of structural racism could contribute to the elevated risk for black Americans.

"Every major crisis or catastrophe hits the most vulnerable communities the hardest," say Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League. And he points to several factors that help to explain the racial divide.

"Black workers are more likely to hold the kinds of jobs that cannot be done from home," Morial says. So, they may be more likely to be exposed to the virus, if they are working in places where it's difficult to maintain social distancing. In addition, he points to longstanding inequities in access to quality care.

"There also is bias among health care workers, institutions and systems that results in black patients ... receiving fewer medical procedures and poorer-quality medical care than white individuals," he says. He says an expansion of Medicaid into those states that still haven't expanded would be one effective policy to address these inequities.

The characteristics of the communities where people live could affect risk, too especially for those who live in low-income neighborhoods. The roots of chronic illness stem from the way people live and the choices that may or may not be available to them. People who develop the chronic illnesses that put them at higher risk of COVID-19 often lack access to affordable and healthy foods or live in neighborhoods where it's not safe to play or exercise outside.

"Let's take a patient with diabetes for example. They are already at high risk for COVID-19 by having a chronic condition," says Joseph Valenti, a physician in Denton, Texas, who promotes awareness of the social determinants of health through his work with the Physicians Foundation.

"If they also live in a food desert, they have to put themselves in greater risk if they want access to healthy food. They may need to take a bus, with people that have COVID-19 but aren't showing symptoms, to get access to nutritious food or even their insulin prescription," he says.

Poor nutrition, and the obesity linked to it, is a leading cause of premature death around the globe. And, this pandemic brings into focus the vulnerability of the millions of people living with lifestyle-related, chronic disease.

"We're seeing the convergence of chronic disease with an infection," says UNC's Beck. And the data suggest that the combination of these two can lead to more serious illness. "We're seeing that obesity can have a great influence on infection," she says.

So, will this shine a spotlight on the need to address these issues? "Hopefully," Beck says. "I think paying attention to these chronic diseases like obesity is in everybody's best interest."

View post:
What Explains The COVID-19 Race Gap? : Shots - Health News - NPR

Ten-year-old Teagan Appleby suffers from a rare genetic condition called Idic 15, which causes seizures.

With medical cannabis, the childs daily seizure count reportedly dropped from 300 to 10 as low as two on a good day. But Teagans mother, Emma, fears COVID-19 threatens their supply.

Things have been difficult, U.K. resident Emma Appleby tells Kent Online. The family ran out of Celixir, which is imported from Israel, two weeks ago. There were shipping delays because of COVID-19, but a new shipment arrived just in the nick of time. Now we are worried about the next batch arriving on time, mother Emma says.

With medical cannabis, Teagans seizure count has reportedly dropped from 300 to 10 two on a good day. But Teagans mother, Emma, fears they are reaching the end of the rope as COVID-19 threatens to abruptly cut supply.

Affordability has been a challenge, too. Prescribed medical cannabis was legalized in the U.K. in 2018, but it can be expensive because its not subsidized by the National Health Service. Applebys prescription costs up to 1,500 each time (more than $2,500).

The family launched an online campaign to raise 5,000 (almost $9,000), but have found it more difficult to raise money in the wake of the pandemic.

People, understandably, havent got enough money to be helping, Emma tells Kent Online. Its impossible to raise money in this pandemic so its putting even more pressure on us which is really hard.

Last year, Teagans family internationalheadlines when Emma was stopped at an airport in England and had her daughters medicine confiscated. Emma was travelling back home from the Netherlands but didnt have a licence to get the product into the country.

On her fundraising campaign page, Emma writes, We have been extremely lucky with people helping and donating and I hate asking, but this is my little girls life and I will do whatever I need to help her.

Subscribeto the Cannabis Post newsletter.

Read the original post:
Medical cannabis reduced a child's daily seizures from 300 to 10. Now, COVID-19 is getting in the way - The GrowthOp

When Mika Matera-Vatnick 21 received President Martha E. Pollacks email in March announcing the closing of campus, her first thought was, What am I gonna do with my flies?

Matera-Vatnick, like many other undergraduate student researchers on campus, had to abandon her honors thesis research project as classes transitioned online for the remainder of the semester.

Last spring, Matera-Vatnick joined the Wolfner lab, led by Prof. Mariana Wolfner, molecular biology and genetics.

Research is the main thing Im involved with on campus. When Im not in class, Im in the lab, she said.

Currently, her research is on pause, since as of March 28, faculty and students are no longer allowed to work in laboratories, barring Matera-Vatnick access to laboratory equipment that is essential to the continuation of her research.

Matera-Vatnick is exploring the genetic basis of sperm competition in fruit flies the competitive process between sperm of two or more different males to fertilize the same egg during sexual reproduction.

Her passion for genetics started during a summer research experience at the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health after her freshman year, where she learned about personalized medicine.

We are all unique with our own unique genomes and we need to treat patients based on their individual needs and their own genome. This is what led me to take the genetics and genetics lab courses at Cornell, she said.

Specifically, Matera-Vatnick is researching whether there are certain genes linked to mating plug ejection times.

Mating plugs are gelatinous secretions used in the mating in fruit flies and other species, including various primates such as kangaroos and reptiles. These secretions are deposited by a male into a female genital tract and later harden into a plug that glues the tract together. The plugs prevent females from re-mating, making it possible for females to store sperm.

In my experiments, Im comparing how long different strains of flies take to go through the process of mating plug ejection and seeing if there is a genetic basis and where in the gene this might come from, Matera-Vatnik said.

In fruit flies, the female expels the mating plug within five hours of mating in a process called mating plug ejection. The timing of ejection influences the paternity share of the fruit flys mates, playing an important role in mate competition.

Paris Ghazi / Sun Senior Editor

Matera-Vatnick experimenting in the Wolfner lab.

Matera-Vatnik randomly selected genetically diverse types of fruit flies to assess the time it takes for female fruit flies to undergo mating plug ejection. Mating plug ejection times can be compared to genetic variations across these specific fruit fly lines.

This comparison can reveal key genes associated with mating plug ejection, evolutionary histories of neural circuits and the role of these neuronal pathways in female sexual selection when a female chooses a male to mate with.

Understanding the process of sexual selection in insect reproduction may contribute to developing strategies for controlling pests and disease vectors in agriculture and public health.

Matera-Vatnick spent last summer at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City learning about computational biology, which is the analysis of biological data through computer simulated models. In contrast to the work she did at WCM, Matera-Vatnick typically conducts her research on fruit flies in a wet lab. A wet lab is a lab where experiments are conducted and chemicals are handled, whereas in a dry lab, data is analyzed with computers and other technology.

Not much is known about the genetic basis that underlies the variations in mating plug ejection timing, but Matera-Vatnik is determined to find out.

I learned so much about how computational tools can be used to answer biological questions that are impossible to answer in a wet lab. I think that combining wet lab and computational power together will bring a unique angle to the questions Im interested in answering, she said.

Though research on campus has been put on hold, Matera-Vatnick is hopeful she can finish this project as her honors thesis.

This is the project that will be my senior thesis project. With all the uncertainty of being here, and hopefully the plan is to stay here over the summer, I want to take this project as far as I can before I graduate, Matera-Vatnick said.

Matera-Vatnick is currently in her hometown Washington, D.C. While she is unable to continue her research at the Wolfner Lab, she still attends weekly lab meetings and will be drafting sections of her honors thesis for the rest of the semester. She plans on taking the MCAT at the end of summer, if permitted.

In the meantime, Matera-Vatnick hopes to make the most of her Cornell research experience, upon her return to campus.

Im trying to take as much as I can from campus, Matera-Vatnick said. Thanks to amazing mentorship from my [Principal Investigator], graduate students and other students in the lab, I can say Im very lucky with who Ive surrounded myself with on campus.

View post:
Student Spotlight on Mika Matera-Vatnick '21: Researching Insect Reproduction Genetics - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

DIJON, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News:

ONCODESIGN (Paris:ALONC) (ALONC FR0011766229), a biopharmaceutical group specialized in precision medicine, announces today the creation of its new Artificial Intelligence Business Unit (BU) headed up by Stphane Gerart.

The growth in the Service business and the emergence of a more mature product portfolio, including drug candidates under proprietary and partnership programs, have prompted Oncodesign to reorganize its operations into three Business Units: Service, Biotech and Artificial Intelligence. The Service and Biotech BUs were up and running in early 2020, while Artificial Intelligence (AI), the third BU, is now in place.

The remit given to the new Artificial Intelligence BU is to support development of the drug discovery of the future and halve research and development times for drug candidates by 2023 while developing its revenue streams by providing research services to industry and the clinical sector. Its creation follows on from the OncoSNIPE project launched three years ago, which harnessed AI technologies in its search for new therapeutic targets to address resistance to cancer treatments. The new BU will be based mainly in Dijon and has seven employees working in a data science laboratory. In late 2020, it will be co-located in Oncodesigns new headquarter building with the IT team (six employees), which are also placed under Stphane Gerarts responsibility.

The configuration of Oncodesign into three business units for the next five years is aligned with our needs as an innovative, multi-disciplinary pharmaceutical group specialized in precision medicine and ready to take up the challenges of our time. The roll-out of the Artificial Intelligence BU, which will help power our future innovation, represents a key pillar of our strategy, commented Philippe Genne, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Oncodesign.

The market for health-related artificial intelligence technologies was worth an estimated $2.1 billion in 2018 and is forecast to grow by 50.2% p.a. to reach $36.1 billion by 20251. The AI market is reputed to be particularly hard to penetrate in the drug discovery segment because of the sophisticated drug discovery and AI development expertise it requires. Oncodesign was one of the first biopharmaceutical companies to have embraced the new AI technologies back in 2015. Human resources represent a critical success factor in this field owing to the requisite mix of skills (biology, chemistry, biomedicine, bioinformatics, software engineering, data science, mathematics, IT infrastructure). Companies that began harnessing AI and data science several years ago have a genuine competitive advantage given that individuals with the requisite skills are now in short supply. Established drug discovery specialists (CROs) such as Oncodesign are fortunate in possessing a majority of these skills already within their ranks.

Beyond the continuation of the development of OncoSNIPE, which will strongly benefit from major future AI enhancements, Oncodesign aims to replicate and build further on its innovation model by harnessing the full possibilities of these technologies, which should help to shorten dramatically the length of drug discovery cycles. Modeling diseases, analyzing mutations and expression levels of proteins, identifying and selecting of molecular targets, designing molecules, in silico screening, in silico assessment of therapeutic combinations and of new biomarkers, analyzing images and, lastly, predicting the toxicity of a drug candidate are the main applications of AI in drug discovery.

To accelerate the roll-out of its AI strategy, Oncodesign plans to acquire new AI technologies by various means, or sometimes by combining them. They include:

We are delighted Stphane Gerart is joining our senior management team to oversee this new business unit. Stphane will bring his solid experience in medical data processing and artificial intelligence, and he will support our rapid development as we embark on a key period of expansion, added Philippe Genne. His high-caliber expertise in artificial intelligence and related technologies, and his know-how in terms of harnessing them effectively in service offerings will play a crucial role in accelerating the development of our new AI BU.

Stphane Gerart, 37, a trained engineer and graduate of the prestigious cole Polytechnique research school after majoring in biology at the INA-PG life sciences institution, wrote an academic research thesis on immunology at the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital in Paris concerning immune deficiencies of genetic origin under the supervision of Prof. Alain Fisher. Between 2012 and 2016, Stphane was a commercial development and marketing consultant with Conseil Novoptim, a strategic, marketing and business consulting firm for high-growth life sciences companies. After supporting the firms development from Toronto (Canada), Stphane joined SOPHiA GENETICS in February 2016 as head of commercial development in Canada. SOPHiA GENETICS is a world leader in analyzing sequencing data for patients and healthcare professionals. In September 2018, Stphane returned to France as SOPHiA GENETICS head of corporate business development, a role he continued to play in until today.

Oncodesigns core purpose of discovering innovative new therapies effective against cancer and serious illnesses with no known treatment is what convinced me to join. I firmly believe that Oncodesign is solidly equipped to achieve its goals, with its very large and high-quality datasets and also the possibility of generating new in vitro or in vivo data to validate and challenge the theoretical models it develops, stated Stphane Gerart, Head of Oncodesigns AI BU. Thanks to this new BU, we are going to consolidate the tremendous data pool acquired by Oncodesign and optimize its analytical processes by harnessing the most effective technologies. Practically speaking, our goal will be to harness insights from artificial intelligence to shorten all the development times for the molecules produced by Oncodesigns platforms so they can move on to the drug-candidate stage as rapidly as possible. Our roadmap is clear: find therapeutic solutions for diseases with no effective treatment or for diseases where treatments have failed.

About ONCODESIGN: http://www.oncodesign.com

Founded 25 years ago by Dr. Philippe Genne, the Companys CEO and Chairman, Oncodesign is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to precision medicine. With its unique experience acquired by working with more than 800 clients, including the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies, along with its comprehensive technological platform combining state-of-the-art medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, regulated bioanalysis, medical imaging and Artificial Intelligence, Oncodesign is able to predict and identify, at a very early stage, each molecule's therapeutic usefulness and potential to become an effective drug. Applied to kinase inhibitors, which represent a market estimated at over $65 billion by 2027 and accounting for almost 25% of the pharmaceutical industrys R&D expenditure, Oncodesigns technology has already enabled the targeting of several promising molecules with substantial therapeutic potential, in oncology and elsewhere, along with partnerships with pharmaceutical groups such as Bristol-Myers Squibb. Oncodesign is based in Dijon, France, in the heart of the towns university and hospital hub, and within the Paris-Saclay cluster. Oncodesign has 233 employees and subsidiaries in Canada and the USA.

Disclaimer

This press release contains certain forward - looking statements and estimates concerning the Companys financial condition, operating results, strategy, projects and future performance and the markets in which it operates. Such forward-looking statements and estimates may be identified by words such as anticipate, believe, can, could, estimate, expect, intend, is designed to, may, might, plan, potential, predict, objective, should, or the negative of these and similar expressions. They incorporate all topics that are not historical facts. Forward looking statements, forecasts and estimates are based on managements current assumptions and assessment of risks, uncertainties and other factors, known and unknown, which were deemed to be reasonable at the time they were made but which may turn out to be incorrect. Events and outcomes are difficult to predict and depend on factors beyond the Companys control. Consequently, the actual results, financial condition, performances and/or achievements of the Company or of the industry may turn out to differ materially from the future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by these statements, forecasts and estimates. Owing to these uncertainties, no representation is made as to the correctness or fairness of these forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates. Furthermore, forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any of them, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

1 Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Market Report, Markets & markets, December 2018

Read more:
Oncodesign Announces the Creation of its new Artificial Intelligence Business Unit and Appoints Stphane Gerart as its Head - Business Wire

If youve been trying to conceive for some time but are still getting negative pregnancy tests, then IVF, or in vitro fertilization, may be an option for you. So what is IVF? In short, its a fertility treatment that consists of extracting a womans eggs, fertilizing them with sperm in a lab, and putting an embryo back in her uterus in the hopes of creating a viable pregnancy.

This is a complicated process, and its absolutely normal if just the thought of a fertility treatment like IVF has you feeling overwhelmed. To help break it down, we asked Lucky Sekhon, M.D., a reproductive endocrinologist, infertility specialist, and board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist in New York, and Enrique Soto, M.D., a fertility specialist in Miami and a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to walk us through the process, costs, and risks of IVF.

First things first. Infertility is defined as the inability to get pregnant after one year of having regular unprotected sex with your partner, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. It can be whats called male factor infertilitywhich includes problems like poor sperm quality and low quantityor female factor infertility like blocked or missing fallopian tubes, endometriosis, or fibroids. It can be a combination, and sometimes the cause is unexplained If youve been having sex with your partner during your fertile windows but are still not getting pregnant, you may be dealing with one of these underlying issues. If those problems turn out to be unsolvable, IVF may be able to help circumvent them.

But thats not the only reason IVF may be something to consider. Its also used by couples who have genetic conditions that run in the family such as cystic fibrosis because genetic testing can easily be done on embryos created in a lab. By creating an embryo outside of the body, it gives us the opportunity to genetically test the embryo to ensure we are selecting the best embryo to transfer into a womans uterus, says Sekhon. This serves to maximize success rates and reduce the risk of miscarriage.

Story continues

In vitro fertilization is also often an option for older women. Age plays a significant part in developing genetically healthy embryosthe risk of having an abnormal embryo with problematic DNA is 60% to 70% for women who are 40 years old and 85% to 90% in women 45 years and older, according to the medical journal Fertility and Sterilitywhich is why IVF is suggested for women in their mid to late 30s and older.

In vitro fertilization has several successive steps: preliminary exams, ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval, fertilization, genetic testing, and implantation. The multistep process is surprisingly efficient, and one IVF cycle can take as little as three weeks, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Preliminary exams

Once you decide to start IVF, a fertility specialist will do some routine testing such as a pelvic ultrasound, semen analysis, uterine exam, and blood tests to determine if youre a good candidate for IVF.

Ovarian stimulation

If everything is clear, theyll start the egg-maturation and -growing process, which is called ovarian stimulation. Youve probably heard that IVF involves a lot of needles, and this is where they come in. Twice a day for 8 to 10 days, youll receive injections into your abdomen of synthetic hormones like follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone in order to kick your natural ovulation cycle into overdrive. (The hormones will likely make you bloat, but this process shouldnt cause permanent weight gain.)

Soto says that his patients usually come in for five or six short appointments during the stimulation phase for transvaginal ultrasoundswhere a specialized ultrasound wand is placed inside the vaginaand blood tests.

After an ultrasound has shown that the ovarian follicles (where the eggs grow) have become the correct size and there are enough eggs to harvest, the fertility specialist will stop the hormone treatments and go in for an egg retrieval about two days later.

Egg retrieval

Egg retrieval is an outpatient procedure during which youll be put under light anesthesia. The method is called transvaginal ultrasound aspiration, which means the eggs are lightly suctioned with a long, thin needle that goes through the vaginal wall to the ovaries. The entire process is quite easy, says Sekhon. The ovaries actually sit on the other side of the vaginal wall, in the pelvis, so they are very easy to access. The procedure is quick, taking between 5 and 20 minutes.

Fertilization

The same day that the eggs are retrieved, they are combined with sperm (a partners or donated) in a lab. The fertilized eggs are then put in an incubator, where they will develop for about a week while being monitored under a microscope for proper development.

Genetic testing

This step is optional. If you want to do genetic testing, doctors take a small biopsy from each embryo and then freeze it, which is called cryopreservation. After the results come back, a woman can try for an implantation of a preserved embryo during her following menstrual cycle.

If you want to try to get pregnant right away without genetic testing, an embryo is transferred using a catheter thats inserted into the vagina to the uterus and a syringe that contains an embryo suspended in liquid. With the push of the syringe, youre one step closer to being pregnant. After the fertilized egg arrives in the uterus, its up to the body; hopefully the egg will implant in the uterine wall just as if it had arrived through the fallopian tube.

Implantation

About two weeks after the embryo transfer, a doctor will administer a blood test to see if you are pregnant. If you test negative, you can try for another implantation about three weeks into your next menstrual cycle using any frozen embryos. If your pregnancy test is positive, your fertility specialist will refer you to a regular ob-gyn, and your pregnancy will be treated just like any other.

The chance of miscarriage after IVF is the same as with a naturally conceived pregnancyabout 15% to 25%, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In vitro fertilization, paid out of pocket, is pricey$15,000 to $25,000 for one cycle, according to Fertility IQ. Soto says prices can vary depending on whether it is a fresh embryo transfer versus a frozen transfer and if you want genetic testing, among other factors. One of the biggest expenses is the synthetic hormone medications used during ovarian stimulation, which cost around $5,000 per cycle.

However, some insurance plans are starting to offer coverage for IVF, says Sekhon, at least in part. And some larger companies are even offering fertility benefits for their employees. Make sure you call your insurance company or reach out to your employers human resources representative to see whats covered before starting the process.

In general, IVF is very safe, says Sekhon. Long-term studies have not shown any link between breast and ovarian cancer and in vitro fertilization, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. In addition, studies have shown that the long-term health of babies conceived from IVF is comparable to that of naturally conceived children, according to Fertility and Sterility.

Overall, the risks of IVF are fairly low. Bruising, allergic reaction, and hyperstimulation of the ovaries during the egg-growth period are the most common, says Soto. The most invasive portion of IVF is the egg retrieval. The procedure uses a thin needle, so there is a very small risk of major bleeding, and like any other procedure, it does carry the risk of infection.

Genetic testing of the embryos is also low risk. While there is a small chance of a false negative or false positive genetic test, Soto cites that the accuracy of the biopsy results is about 98% to 99% in genetic labs. There is also the rare occurrence of an ectopic pregnancy after in vitro fertilization, though the chances are very small.

What about couples who plan for one baby but end up with multiple? Current national guidelines suggest transferring only one embryo during each in vitro fertilization cycle, which makes women less likely to give birth to multiple children. It is still possible to become pregnant with multiples after the transfer of only one embryo. A single embryo may divide in the uterus after a transfer, Soto says. But the risk is very low, approximately 3%.

So does in vitro fertilization work? Yes, but there are a variety of factors that influence the IVF success rate, says Soto, including the cause of infertility, age of the patient, number of embryos transferred, transfer of genetically normal versus untested embryos, and the IVF center. To get some insight into your personal chances of IVF success, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology offers a helpful tool.

Age is a significant factor. As women get older, they produce fewer eggs, which are also more likely to have genetic abnormalities. So the chances of finding a normal embryo become especially slim in women 40 years old and older, Sekhon says. In cases with a genetically normal embryo, the transfer rate of success is about 60% to 65%, regardless of age and diagnosis, according to internal data from the Reproductive Medicine Association of New York.

And where you receive fertility treatment really does matter. Finding a fertility doctor who makes you feel comfortable and empowered throughout the IVF process can make your journey to parenthood smoother. SART also offers resources to compare IVF clinic success rates.

You are not alone. It is extremely common to hit a bump in the road and face challenges on the journey to building your family, says Sekhon. While the path may not be straightforward, with the right support and guidance, you will get there.

Minhae Shim Roth is a writer and reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow her on Instagram @momphdblog.

Experiences of infertility always have one thing in common: uncertainty. The countless visits to doctors, the months (or years) of planning, the tens of thousands of dollars, never add up to a guarantee. Even under the best of circumstances, theres only so much about a pregnancy you can plan, and in the midst of a global pandemic, the idea of planning anything seems foolish. For National Infertility Awareness Week, were exploring the uncertaintyand the hope.

Originally Appeared on Glamour

Read more:
What Is IVF? Your Complete Guide to Understanding the Process - Yahoo Style