04/30/2002
By Harvey McConnell
A woman's fertility can start to decline as early as her late 20s, not in her 30s as has been thought. Male fertility also begins to decline from the age of 35.
"Although we noted a decline in female fertility in the late 20s, what we found was a decrease in the probability of becoming pregnant per menstrual cycle, not in the probability of eventually achieving a pregnancy," declared lead author Dr David Dunson, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States.
This study was carried out in collaboration with Dr Bernardo Colombo and colleagues at the University of Padua, Padua, Italy. Data was drawn from a large multinational study of daily fecundability which enrolled 782 women aged between 18 and 40 from seven European centres " Milan, Verona, Lugano, Dusseldorf, Paris, London and Brussels.
The researchers point out that the association between male and female age and fertility has been difficult to assess because of changes in sexual behavior with age and the tendency for sexual partners to be of similar ages. However, their study controlled for frequency and timing of intercourse, and "this makes our results uniquely reliable," they suggest.
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