Every year, tens of thousands of young women choose to freeze their eggs, an already painful spending procedure. As more Americans postpone motherhood, numbers are growing.
But there are many unknowns: what is the optimal age of the donor to freeze? What are the success rates? And critically: How long do frozen eggs last?
Answers to those questions may be more difficult to find. In its drastic reduction in the centers for disease control and prevention, the Trump administration abolished a federal research team that brought together and analyzed fertility clinics data with the purpose of improving the results.
The dismissal of the operation of six people “is a true critical loss,” said Aaron Levine, a professor at the Jimmy Public Policy School and Rosalynn Carter in Georgia Tech, who has collaborated with the CDC team in research projects.
“They had the most complete data on fertility clinics, and their central value was the truth in patient advertising.”
Barbara Colllura, Executive Director of Resolve: the National Infertility Association, said that the loss of the CDC team would be a setback for both infertile couples and for women who contemplate the freezing and bank of eggs.
The termination comes as politicians have been increasingly concerned about fertility rates in the United States. President Trump declared himself the “president of fertility” and issued an executive order that expanded access to vitro fertilization.
“It does not face the White House inclined in the IVF,” said Collura.
One in seven women, married or single, experiences infertility, said: “So I only look at those statistics and it is disappointing, if not amazing, that the public health agency of our nation has decided that we are not going to talk.” “
When asked why the team had been eliminated, a spokeswoman for health and human services said the administration is “in the planning stages” to move maternal health programs to the new administration for healthy America. She did not provide other details.
Team scientists, the National Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance System, tried to solve a series of riddles around IVF’s planned research included a study that analyzed birth rates that involve eggs and embryos.
“We do not have great data on the success rates of egg freezing when women do it for their own personal use, just because it is relatively new and difficult to track,” said Dr. Levine.
The unknowns weigh on women who want to have children. Simeonne Bookal, who works with more. Collura in Resolve, frozen his eggs in 2018. He knew he wanted to have children, but he was waiting to find the right couple.
Earlier this year, Mrs. Bookal promised; The wedding will take place next spring. He is now 38 years old, and said the bank eggs had provided it with a “safety blanket.”
Although he still cannot be completely sure that he can get pregnant and have children, “I would be much more stressed if I had frozen my eggs.”
The precise success rates for the procedure are elusive, because many of the studies published so far are based on theoretical models that depend on data from patients with infertility or who are donating their eggs. They are different in many aspects of women who are preserving their own eggs for future use.
Other studies are small, informing about the results involving less than 1,000 women who have returned to defrost their eggs and suffer IVF, said Dr. Ir. Sarah Druckenmiller Cascante” Clinical Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Nyu Langone and author of a recent review article on the subject.
“The data is limited, and it is important to be honest with patients about it,” he said.
“I do not like to think about it as an insurance policy that is guaranteed to pay, which results in a baby, but increases its chances of having a biological child later in life, especially if you do when you are young and get a good amount of eggs.”
The CDC team maintained a database, the National Art Surveillance System, which was created by Congress in 1992 and calculated the success rates for each report fertility clinic. He needs a constant update, and his future is now in doubt.
The Assisted Reproductive Technology Society has a similar database available for researchers. But it is a little less complete than the CDCs, since it only includes information from its member clinics, about 85 percent of the nations fertility clinics.
This database does not attend a dedicated research team, said Sean Tipton, director of Defense and Policy of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.
The questions about the risks and benefits of egg freezing have tasks about additional urgency, since the number of women who bank their eggs for future use has grown dramatically.
The procedure was no longer considered experimental as of 2012. In 2014, only 6,090 patients accumulated their eggs for fertility preservation; By 2022, the number had risen to 28,207. The figure was 39,269 in 2023, last year for which the data is available.
