The use of hormones to treat infertility (HT only)

Students should be able to explain the use of hormones in modern reproductive technologies to treat infertility.

This includes giving FSH and LH in a ‘fertility drug’ to a woman. She may then become pregnant naturally.

In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) treatment:

• IVF involves giving a mother FSH and LH to stimulate the maturation of several eggs.
• The eggs are collected from the mother and fertilised by sperm from the father in the laboratory.
• The fertilised eggs develop into embryos.
• At the stage when they are tiny balls of cells, one or two embryos are inserted into the mother’s uterus (womb).

WS 1.1 Developments of microscopy techniques have enabled IVF treatments to develop.

WS 1.3 Understand social and ethical issues associated with IVF treatments.

Although fertility treatment gives a woman the chance to have a baby of her own:

• it is very emotionally and physically stressful
• the success rates are not high
• it can lead to multiple births which are a risk to both the babies and the mother.