Hormone to tackle infertility found

London, March 17: Offering new hope for infertility treatment, infertility experts at the Imperial College London claim to have discovered a hormone that may help resume reproduction.

The hormone, called kisspeptin, plays a pivotal role in regulating reproductive function. It stimulates the release of the hormonesdefine which control the menstrual cycle, and also leads to the production of sex hormones in fertile women, experts highlighted.

While inadequate release of the hormone causes animals and humans to miss puberty and remain sexually immature, an over-optimum production causes early onset of puberty.

In the latest study, researchers enrolled 10 women with hypothalamic amenorrhoea, a condition wherein the women miss out on their periods due to a hormone imbalance. While 5 were injected with the hormone kisspeptin, the other half received a placebo shot of saline solution.

A follow-on blood examination was carried out to track the levels of luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), two key sex hormones involved in ovulationdefine and fertility.

Women who received kisspeptin had a 48-fold increase in LH and a 16-fold increase in FSH, as opposed to women who received saline solution shot, researchers found.

"We’ve shown previously that kisspeptin stimulates reproductive hormone release in women with normal reproductive function. But this is the first time in a model of infertility in humans that it's been shown to stimulate reproductive hormone release," study’s lead researcher, Dr Waljit Dhillo, noted.

Describing it as a potential therapy for infertility, Dhillo marked, “This is a very exciting result and suggests that kisspeptin treatment could restore reproductive function in women with low sex hormone levels.”

Infertility experts rate the findings as promising. Unlike most current infertility treatments that are physically uncomfortable and financially exhausting, the new treatment is a “more effective and subtle way of treating women whose reproductive systems had effectively closed down,” noted Professor Richard Anderson, a fertility expert at the University of Edinburgh.

The team now focuses on “determining the best protocol for repeated administration with the hope of developing a new therapy for infertility.”

The findings were presented at the annual Society for Endocrinology BES (British Endocrine Societies) conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire scheduled for 16-19 March 2009.