Women are being advised to plan early if they want to have children, as the number and quality of a woman’s ova start to diminish rapidly from the age of 37.
Taiwanese Society of Reproductive Medicine president Huang Hong-yuan (黃泓淵) yesterday said according to the Health Promotion Administration’s data, the success rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF) for women aged 41 to 42 in the country is only about 10 percent.
“Although Taiwan’s assisted reproductive technology has greatly improved, with the live birth rate for women younger than 35 undergoing IVF jumping from lower than 30 percent in 1999 to nearly 40 percent in 2011, the success rate for women aged between 41 and 42 has only improved three percent in the same 12-year period,” Huang said.
Liu Zhi-hong (劉志鴻), a council member of the society, also advised women to give birth before 37 if they plan to have a family, as fertility treatment for those aged 40 and over can be challenging.
Liu also said that even some women aged under 37 might have premature ovarian failure (POF) if their ovaries’ biological age was older than their actual age.
Seven high-risk groups for POF were identified by Liu; those who have had ovarian surgery, have suffered endometriosis, have shorter periods, have a family history of POF, smoke, have had chemotherapy or electrotherapy, or have a relatively low serum anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) level, which indicates a level of the number of the remaining follicles in the ovaries.
For women who undergo IVF treatment, Huang said the number of embryos implanted, contrary to what many used to believe, does not affect the IVF success rate.
“As the technology for embryo freezing has advanced, women aged 35 and under now only need to transfer one to two embryos at a time and freeze and preserve the rest for possible future use,” Huang said.
“For women aged 35 and under, the success rate of using thawed ova, which is about 40 percent, is about the same as that of using fresh embryos,” Huang said.
With single or double-embryo implants, the risks of multiple births and pre-term babies with health defects can be lowered as well, Huang said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods