New Delhi, February 10 (IANS). A team of scientists has discovered that a drug used to treat chronic kidney disease and heart failure is also effective in treating premature ovarian insufficiency.
This research by a team of researchers from Japan’s Juntendo University and Hong Kong University was published in the electronic edition of the American journal Science on Tuesday.
The team hopes that this discovery will lead to a new therapy in the treatment of infertility. “We want to optimize ovary stimulation and find more effective drugs,” Professor Kazuhiro Kawamura of Juntendo University told The Japan Times.
In women who have premature ovarian insufficiency, their periods stop before the age of 40. Although this condition causes ovarian fibrosis, which prevents follicle growth, a drug called finerenone prevents fibrosis in kidney and heart tissue.
In a clinical trial, the team gave finerenone to patients with the condition, along with drugs for ovary stimulation and ovum maturation. As a result, a fertilized egg was obtained through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Before the clinical trial, the team conducted a test on rats. Wanted to know if finerenone helps follicle growth. The test results showed that the rats given the drug had more babies than normal, and the babies had no abnormalities.
In 2013, Kawamura, then an associate professor at St. Mariana University School of Medicine, introduced an infertility treatment method called “in vitro activation”.
This method, now in clinical use, collects a section of the patient’s ovaries via laparoscopy, activates the follicles with a medical agent, and transplants them under the ovarian membrane. However, this procedure requires general anesthesia, which is not good for the patient.
The team searched for an oral medicine with the same effect as this method. After testing approximately 1,300 drugs, Finerenone was determined to be the best.
–IANS
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