Delaying the onset of menopausing using ovarian tissue transplantation - infrastructure and awareness needed.
Ovarian tissue resection and reimplantation is a common practive for people undergoing cancer treatment. This is due to the DNA damage that one’s body incurs during various regimes of chemo and radiation which could inadveretnly be passed throught the germ cells to children. Also individuals which undertake gender affirming surgery have elected to preserve their ovarian tissue.
After resection, the egg-producing tissue (called ovarian cortex) can be reimplanted to increase the possibility of pregnancy and enable natural hormone production to delay the onset of menopause. Delaying menopause is non-trivial as post-menopausal hormone replacement can cause higher risks of breast cancer, blood clots, and other hormone-dependent tumors. Menopause itself can lead to a whole host of mood, body, and quality of life issues so delaying onset is very important as we continue to life longer lives and want to extend our healthspan.
To get widespread use, we need better infrastructure for people to be able to electively store their ovarian tissue and scientific improvements. The grafting of ovarian tissue does not always take due to vasculature issues - with 30% of people becoming pregnant after.
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