Yale fertility scientist claims he has discovered how to delay menopause indefinitely – a breakthrough that could allow women to have babies at an older age

A procedure used to treat infertility in cancer patients could now be the answer to indefinitely delaying menopause, according to a new study.

Mathematicians discovered that by implanting previously harvested ovarian tissue from a woman, they could rebuild the follicles needed to restore their fertility.

The process is called ovarian tissue cryopreservation and has been used in cancer patients who would otherwise have become infertile due to early menopause as a result of their cancer treatments.

But harvesting and freezing ovarian tissue can delay or even eliminate menopause if the tissue is returned in fractions, with multiple tissue replacements, just before menopause occurred.

The procedure has not been studied in humans, but if the breakthrough is successful it could mean women are fertile into their 70s and beyond.

“For the first time in medical history, we have the ability to potentially delay or eliminate menopause,” said Kutluk Oktay, MD, PhD, co-author of the study.

Oktay is an ovarian biologist and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Reproduction and Fertility Preservation and adjunct professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the Yale School of Medicine (YSM).

The cryopreservation process should not be confused with a woman freezing her eggs, which allows her to become pregnant later in life but before menopause.

When removed, the ovarian tissue is frozen and stored in sealed containers and stored in an environment with temperatures as high as 320 degrees Celsius.

The tissue is then thawed, usually years in the future, and reimplanted under the patient's skin and within 10 days it reconnects with surrounding blood vessels to restore ovarian function.

According to the newspaper, the entire process takes about three months YSM.

Oktay likened the process to a parent's decision to freeze their baby's umbilical cord blood at birth, in case they need it later in life due to health problems.

Freezing ovarian tissue works the same way, he said, and could also be extracted during a separate procedure, such as endometriosis.

The tissue remains alive for 24 hours, allowing the gynecologist to send it to a laboratory to be frozen.

About 11 percent of healthy women experience menopause late, that is, after the age of 55, and for some women they may experience health complications such as heart failure, cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and many other symptoms.

Therefore, Oktay said women with a family history of menopause-related complications “may consider this procedure at an early age to at least return menopause to normal.”

He told Dailymail.com that while menopause is a natural process and many women may welcome it, he and his team originally set out with the intention of “leveling the playing field” for women at risk of extreme symptoms or going through menopause prematurely. .

“There are even studies showing that women with late menopause live longer,” he said, adding, “but this could be related to common genetic origins, such as having a better ability to repair DNA.”

Oktay developed cryopreservation in the 1990s and performed the first ovarian transplant procedure on a cancer patient in 1999.

In recent years, he focused his efforts on applying the same process to treating premenopausal women created a mathematical model predict how long the procedure could delay menopause.

The model shows how long menopause would last depending on how old the woman was when the ovarian tissue was harvested.

This showed that the younger a woman was when she underwent cryopreservation, the longer her menopause would be delayed.

For example, a woman who collected her ovarian tissue at age 25 would delay menopause by an average of 15.6 years, while a woman who collected her tissue at age 40 would only delay it by an average of 3.4 years.

The results are based on the assumption that a woman would only have one replacement, but if she instead chose to replace parts of their tissue over several years, they could potentially prevent menopause from ever occurring .

“If ovarian tissue can be frozen under the age of 30, menopause could even theoretically be eliminated in some cases,” the study said.

'However, the feasibility and safety of delaying menopause after age 60 need to be clinically evaluated.'

Researchers used existing biological data on the rate at which women's follicles decline and built a model of how many dormant eggs, called primordial follicles, are still present in a woman's ovaries at the time of menopause.

They developed the model to represent how the ovaries age based on the number of follicles in the ovaries.

“The younger the person, the greater the number of eggs she has, and the higher the quality of those eggs,” Oktay told YSM.

'The model takes women between the ages of 21 and 40 into account. Data over 40 shows that the procedure is unlikely to delay menopause for a woman with an average egg reserve, but this may change with the development of more efficient freezing and transplantation. methods in the future,” he said.

Researchers said it is important to consider the health benefits associated with delaying menopause, which include mood swings, aches and pains, hot flashes, painful migraines and weight gain.

“A lot of the interest behind delaying menopause is fertility, but a lot of it also comes from the idea that functioning ovaries are better for a woman's health,” Lawley said.

'Menopause is associated with many health problems related to cardiovascular disease, bone density, obesity, etc.

“Keeping the ovaries functioning longer can delay or even prevent the onset of these health problems,” he added.

Dailymail.com has contacted researchers involved in the investigation for comment.