‘Fountain of youth’ IVF treatment boosts pregnancy hopes

Melbourne researchers have made a major breakthrough with a fertility treatment giving older women a better chance of having children.

Mother Rebecca Tehan says “to be able to take something to make your eggs healthy, and make them young again, that would be incredible”. Picture: Jason Edwards

Melbourne researchers have discovered a potential “fountain of youth” treatment for fertility which could give older women a better chance to have children.

The Saturday Herald Sun can reveal a supplement could be developed for women in their 30s and 40s to improve their fertile window by reducing the chance of miscarriage, infertility or age-related chromosomal abnormalities.

A woman is born with a lifetime of eggs, so her fertility starts to decline from her 30s as the fewer healthy eggs available suffer biological wear-and-tear to their DNA.

Scientists from Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute and Robinson Research Institute tested two treatments, MitoQ and BGP-15, that target mitochondria – the batteries of the cell that supply energy to the eggs – in both mouse and human eggs.

Rebecca Tehan, husband Daniel and their children Monty, Freddy, Lenny and Alfie. Picture: Jason Edwards

They found the treatments appeared to protect the eggs from chromosomal abnormalities and “made them look young again”.

In immature eggs, the treatments improved the way the cells organised its chromosomes, a key process before conception to ensure the egg contains the right amount of genetic material needed for a healthy pregnancy.

“We’d like to be Doctor Who and reverse time. But the best we can hope for is to try and stop time, or reduce the impact of time on eggs,” said Monash IVF medical director Professor Luk Rombauts, a co-author on the study.

“These two molecules show promising signs we can achieve that.”

The findings were published in the journal Human Reproduction.

Lead researcher Professor John Carroll said their task now was to test whether these therapies also made eggs “act younger”, and reduced rate of miscarriages and chromosomal abnormalities to make them “more confident this is an elixir of youth”.

“There is probably not much hope extending the fertile lifespan (beyond the 40s) because the number of eggs left in the ovaries as we age is very small, so this is more about improving the quality of the fertile lifespan,” Prof Carroll said.

Rebecca Tehan, mum to four kids aged under four, said after getting married at age 36 she wanted to have her children before turning 40 – a feat she achieved by two months.

After trying to conceive naturally for a year and turning to artificial insemination, she and husband Daniel naturally conceived their boys now aged 3, 20-months and six-month-old twins. Before each successful pregnancy she suffered a miscarriage.

“To be able to take something to make your eggs healthy, and make them young again, that would be incredible,” she said.

“I’ve got a lot of friends who have been trying, and have constant IVF battles in their late 30s. They’ve fortunately fallen pregnant, but it comes at a cost.”