Hormone-Blocking Agent Preserves Fertility In Women Undergoing Chemotherapy.(gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue)

2001 MAR 22 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The toxicity of cancer chemotherapy agents often leaves women of childbearing age permanently infertile. A new hormone-blocking procedure, in which a patient's reproductive system is placed into a type of temporary prepubescent stasis," enables women to have children after chemotherapy ends.

"Our research stems from the observation that pre-pubescent girls who undergo chemotherapy fare much better in terms of preserving their fertility than 25- or 35-year-old women," explains Dr. Zeev Blumenfeld, a researcher of reproductive endocrinology at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology who headed the study.

Blumenfeld and his colleagues discovered that they could simulate the "pre-pubertal hormonal milieu" and protect the ovarian function of young women by administering a natural hormone called gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue [GnRH-a]. The agent is given to patients beginning two weeks before they start chemotherapy and for about four to six months or until completion of chemotherapy. Gonadotropins are hormones responsible for the activity of both the ovaries and testes, and GnRH-a blocks the release of these hormones, creating a state in which the hormonal activity of the pituitary gland and ovaries is halted and a woman's reproductive system is temporarily shut down.

"Our results suggests the beneficial effect of GnRH-a co-treatment may be extrapolated toward the preservation of future fertility and ovarian function in every young woman in the reproductive age exposed to chemotherapy agents," says Blumenfeld.

Blumenfeld's findings, published in the January/February 2001 issue of the Journal of the Society for Gynecologic Investigation, were presented in February in Geneva, Switzerland, at the Sixth International Symposium on GnRH Analogues in Cancer and Human Reproduction.

Premature ovarian failure, or POF, is a common long-term consequence of the toxic effects of chemotherapeutic agents. While such damage is reversible in other tissue made up of rapidly dividing cells, such as bone marrow, the number of potential fetal egg cells is fixed before a woman is even born.

Blumenfeld began researching women receiving cyclophosphamide, one of the most widely used cancer chemotherapy agents, also used in patients with lupus nephritis, a ...