IVF jabs could be no more

Jo Revill12 April 2012

Women who undergo fertility treatment may soon be able to avoid the discomfort of daily injections thanks to a new device being pioneered by doctors in London.

A team at the Hammersmith Hospital has achieved the first pregnancies in patients undergoing IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment, using a needle-free device known as a J-Tip.

The J-Tip is a disposable cartridge, around 10 centimetres long, containing compressed carbon dioxide gas which propels the medication under high pressure through the skin.

In order to retrieve eggs from the ovary of a woman who is undergoing treatment, doctors have to stimulate the ovary to produce follicles - or groups of cells - containing the eggs.

They do so by injecting hormones into the patient every day for several weeks before they perform the operation to retrieve the follicles. But for women who hate needles, this is a highly unpleasant procedure.

Dr Stuart Lavery, a fellow in reproductive medicine and surgery at the hospital, today told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Vienna, that they tested the device on 20 women between the ages of 20 and 38.

Using the J-Tip, the researchers retrieved an average of 12 eggs each from 16 out of the 20 women. Four of the group of 16 women then became pregnant.

He said: "The results in this small study were reassuringly comparable with conventional techniques in terms of number of eggs collected and pregnancy rates.

"This is the first time that the J-Tip has been used in reproductive medicine, and we can report the first pregnancies achieved using this system."

Dr Lavery said the ultimate aim was for patients to be able to administer the treatment themselves.

"All the women who had undergone conventional IVF cycles previously, and the diaries they kept, indicated a clear preference for the needle-free approach."

IVF treatments form the majority of assisted reproduction techniques in Britain as more couples decide to opt for help rather than waiting to conceive naturally over several years.

In 1998, the year for which the latest figures are available, 8,400 babies were born in the UK through IVF or other fertility treatment.

France, Germany and the UK are the biggest users of fertility treatment, and in Britain annually more than 35,000 couples will turn to medical science for help with infertility.

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