Merck & Co., Inc., which operates outside the U.S. and Canada as MSD, announced the European Commission (EC) approval of ELONVA® (corifollitropin alfa injection). ELONVA is indicated for controlled ovarian stimulation (COS) in combination with a GnRH antagonist for the development of multiple follicles in women participating in an assisted reproductive technology (ART) program.

Repros Therapeutics Inc. (NasdaqCM:RPRX) announced that the Company and its consultants participated in a teleconference with the Division of Reproductive and Urologic Products of the FDA on January 25, 2010. The primary purpose of the meeting was to gain a better understanding of the FDA’s position regarding the use of Repros’ oral Androxal® product in the treatment of men with secondary hypogonadism wishing to preserve their fertility…

Gently rocking embryos while they grow during in vitro fertilization (IVF) improves pregnancy rates in mice by 22 percent, new University of Michigan research shows. The procedure could one day lead to significantly higher IVF success rates in humans. Researchers built a device that imitates the motion that embryos experience in the body as they make their way down a mammal’s oviduct (a woman’s Fallopian tube) to the uterus.

The widespread use of so-called fertility drugs, not just high-tech laboratory procedures, likely plays a larger role than previously realized in the growing problem of premature births in the United States, because these drugs cause a high percentage of multiple births, the March of Dimes said today…

Men who were previously deemed sterile due to aggressive cancer treatments may still be able to biologically father children according to a new study published in the journal, Bone Marrow Transplantation. The study’s lead author, Paul Turek, MD, former professor and endowed chair at the University of California San Francisco and founder of The Turek Clinic, pioneered the technique, called FNA Sperm Mapping, that is able to discover pockets of viable sperm in the testes…

University of Florida urologists have used robot-assisted surgery to cut about 20 minutes off average surgery time for conventional vasectomy reversal using a microscope. Sperm count after surgery is comparable over a year for the two procedures, but the robotic procedure appears to result in a quicker return of sperm count. “For a couple that’s trying to get pregnant, this is a big deal,” said Sijo Parekattil, M.D., director of male infertility and microsurgery at UF, who led the study…

The Medical Board of California has accused fertility doctor Michael Kamrava — who performed an in vitro fertilization procedure that led to the birth of octuplets in January 2009 — of a pattern of gross negligence and of creating a “stockpile” of unused embryos that serve “no clinical purpose,” the Los Angeles Times reports. The board filed a 13-page accusation in December 2009 reacting to Kamrava’s 11-year treatment of Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to 14 children through IVF during that time…

A new strategy that researchers believe provides a more comprehensive screening of the entire chromosomal makeup of an embryo shows tremendous promise in the field of preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) according to a study published in the December issue of Fertility and Sterility. Forty-five infertile couples participated in the study with an average age of 37.7 years. Using a novel screening approach, researchers biopsied several cells from embryos five days after fertilization, also known as the blastocyst stage…

UroToday.com - Varicocele has only recently been shown to be a bilateral disease, the primary cause for male infertility and low testosterone level. It has now for the first time been discovered to be the cause of enlargement of the prostate and for the development of prostatic cancer as well. Also, for the first time in the published medical literature, it has been proven that super-selective venography and sclerotherapy (Gat Goren Technique) may reverse early localized prostate cancer and reduce prostate volume in benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH)…

Nearly 10 years after the discovery that birds make a hormone that suppresses reproduction, University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientists have established that humans make it too, opening the door to development of a new class of contraceptive and possible treatments for cancer or other diseases. The hormone, gonadotropin inhibitory hormone (GnIH), has the opposite effect from gonadotropin releasing hormone, a key reproductive hormone. While GnRH triggers a cascade of hormones that prime the body for sex and procreation, GnIH puts a brake on the cascade..