The Uterus Update 🗞️

AI fertility tests, Tim Walz, early PPROM – and the ‘end of men’ (again)

Photo by Joanes Andueza on Unsplash

It’s reproductive health round-up week here at Life, Almost. For new subscribers (hello!👋) I do one of these a month. I keep an eye out for interesting developments and findings relevant to reproductive health, pregnancy loss, fertility, and maternity care, then break them all down for you, in one handy place.

Before we get into it, a quick announcement: on October 8^th I’m doing an in-person event to celebrate the release of the paperback of my book Life, Almost: Miscarriage, misconceptions, and a search for answers from the brink of motherhood. I’ll be chatting to Tom de Freston, author of Strange Bodies – an extraordinary memoir about art, grief, and recurrent miscarriage from a partner’s perspective – at Caper Books in Oxford, hosted by Miranda Ward, author of Adrift: On fertility, uncertainty and the wilderness of the body.

You can get your ticket here.

And now, let’s dive into those headlines.

In the news…

A blood test to screen for male infertility at GP surgeries could soon be possible, with the help of AI – according to a new study. Researchers developed an AI model based on blood and sperm samples from nearly 4,000 men, and found it could predict male infertility risk from a blood sample with about 74 per cent accuracy.  (Guardian/Scientific Reports)

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This is an interesting piece about tongue tie in newborns and whether it’s being overdiagnosed. (Mail)

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The compensation that egg donors can be paid in the UK is to rise for the first time in more than a decade – payments will increase from £750 per round of treatment to £986 from October 1.  (BBC)

Sidenote: If you’re interested in the topic of donor conception, can I recommend you follow Annabel Shepherd - aka Maybehood - over on Instagram, who is writing a book on the subject currently.

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Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz revealed his two children were conceived via fertility treatment – specifically IUI, as opposed to IVF (though he has made it clear he’s a staunch defender of the latter). (New York Times)

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…And IVF in the U.S. needs defending. In Alabama – where the State Supreme Court declared embryos “unborn children” – fertility clinics are increasingly moving stored embryos out of state for fear of legal repercussions. At least four of Alabama’s seven fertility clinics have hired biotech companies to move embryos elsewhere, according to this report. (New York Times)

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A new study has shed light on the rare – but serious – pregnancy complication, PPROM (pre-term pre-labour rupture of membranes). PPROM, essentially when someone’s waters break too early, is a factor in around 30 per cent of pre-term births. It carries serious risks, such as very premature birth, placental abruption and infection, including sepsis and death (both for baby and for the person carrying the baby). Yet, relatively little is known about the condition – especially when it happens earlier in pregnancy. Indeed, there are no official treatment guidelines – either in the UK or internationally – on what to do if it occurs before 24 weeks. And, as the researchers behind the new study at the University of Liverpool point out, better information is desperately needed, because if PPROM occurs before 23 weeks, parents can sometimes be advised to terminate the pregnancy.

However, until now, very little up-to-date data was available on either the risks for pregnant women or the survival rates for babies for doctors and patients to base their decisions on. As well as offering a baseline of data, from 300 cases of PPROM between 16 and 23 weeks of pregnancy, the new study found that 10 per cent of women who opted for termination after being diagnosed with early PPROM still developed sepsis, compared with 13 per cent who continued with the pregnancy. The researchers suggested this could be a clue that infection is a cause rather than a consequence of early PPROM. (BBC/BMJ Medicine)

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This is a fascinating long(ish) read on the data gaps around pregnancy loss in the U.S. – and the people working to fix this knowledge deficit. Of particular interest: this new study – currently recruiting – looking at the genetic factors that might influence pregnancy loss. (STAT News)

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Indonesia has changed its laws to allow abortions up until 14 weeks in cases of rape or medical emergency. The change is part of a wider programme to reduce its high maternal mortality rate – the country’s previous rules, which restricted abortion to before six weeks, are likely to have meant a high prevalence of unsafe procedures being carried out. (Time)

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Meanwhile, after a three-year enquiry, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women ruled that Poland’s restrictive abortion laws endanger the health and lives of women and amount to ‘gender-based violence against women and may rise to the level of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment’. (UN News/Centre for Reproductive Rights)

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It’s the end of men, again! (It’s not really, but there is some exciting research going on, developing cells in a lab – starting with a flake of skin – that are capable of producing human sperm, which could be a game-changer for some fertility patients, as this feature explains). (Mail)

And finally…

If you’re interested in the topics I so often cover in these round-ups – especially reproductive rights – can I wholeheartedly recommend And Still We March by the journalist

Marisa

Bate, which is out in paperback TODAY. It was one of my favourite reads from last year, when it was released under a different title.

A blend of memoir and reportage, it follows Marisa’s trip, via Greyhound bus, across America, interviewing activists who are trying to make the world a fairer, safer place for women. But she’s also following in the footsteps of her mother, who made a similar journey aged 22 in 1974 – the year after Roe v Wade was passed. The book skilfully blends many elements: a history of the struggle for abortion rights, bona fide reporting from the frontline in today’s battle for reproductive justice, reflections on how we keep going when the political tide feels against us, and also a more personal pilgrimage, uncovering family stories.

As we build up to a defining presidential election in the U.S., and in the shadow of a ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls here in the UK, I’d struggle to think of a more timely book.

Until next week,