Women get the wrong dose of fertility drugs

MORE than 90 per cent of women undergoing fertility treatments may be getting the wrong doses of the drugs used to stimulate their ovaries. As well as putting them at greater risk of side effects, the drugs may not work properly.

Women usually release one egg during each menstrual cycle, but during IVF, drugs are given to make them release more eggs, which are then collected surgically. Until recently, it was hard to work out the precise dose a woman needed. Now, Geoffrey Trew of Hammersmith Hospital in London and his colleagues have used a "dose calculator" to tailor the dose according to a woman's age, body mass index, the estimated number of eggs left in her ovaries, and levels of a hormone called FSH that triggers egg development.

They tried the calculator on 161 women and determined that 75 per cent of them should be given a lower dose of drugs than they would usually receive, while 15 per cent should get a higher dose. When 113 of the women were then given the right dose, an...