13 ms·

Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

81 points by danielmorozoff 10y ago

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
This seems to be one of many studies done that keep hinting that ovaries may continue to produce eggs. That's pretty awesome news especially for young women who have had to undergo treatments that may have killed off eggs early on. I also wonder how long they continue to be made. For instance if someone had a genetic disease that was somehow overcome with, say, genetic modification in some future time would her future eggs also carry the updated genetics?
- Declanomous 10y ago
  > If someone had a genetic disease that was somehow overcome with, say, genetic modification in some future time would her future eggs also carry the updated genetics? The answer is almost certainly yes, if the cells used to create the gametes had their DNA modified. The really interesting question is whether the epigenetic code changes in these cells. The discovery of epigenetics had huge implications in human development. If women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have, that would mean children are affected by the decisions made by their grandmother. If grandma lived through a famine, her grandchild might be predisposed to obesity due to epigenetic factors, regardless of what mom does.
  - sambe 10y ago
    What do you mean by "epigenetic code"? Epigenetic means not encoded in DNA. Heritability is hotly debated (and anything positive in that area tends to be overstated in the media). Wiki has a few links on contested terms and taking caution vs enthusiasm of eg Chopra. There have also been several stories like this http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-interpreted-epigenetics-study-of-the-week http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-inte... over the last months.
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      I realize epigenetic traits are not encoded in DNA. It's perfectly acceptable to use the term code to refer to an epigenetic "configuration". I didn't point out this fact because I figured the people reading Hacker News probably know that things can be encoded without using DNA, and I felt the distinction was needlessly pedantic. I recognize the limited scope of epigenetics, however epigenetics do play a significant role in gene expression. To say otherwise would be foolish. I know heritability of epigenetic traits is limited. I didn't claim epigenetic traits are being passed down between generations. If women are born with all of their eggs, the DNA in her eggs would DIRECTLY be affected by the environment of her mother. There is strong scientific evidence epigenetic traits are reliably inherited by each of the daughter cells during mitosis. Thus it is fully plausible the epigenetic code of a child could be affected by their grandmother. If what you know about epigenetics comes from Wikipedia, you are probably about as informed as "the media". As a formally trained lab biologist, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that biology is one of the worst scientific fields to learn about from Wikipedia, especially when it comes to discoveries in young fields like epigentics.
      - photogrammetry 10y ago
        They are encoded in DNA. They are patterns in the physical structure of DNA beyond the raw A,T,G,C etc. Please be accurate in HN comments, and don't oversimplify for 'clarity' or 'readability,' especially for a topic as complex as the heritability of epigenetic traits. Additionally, Wikipedia [0] is a quite satisfactory source for information on epigenetics. Your casual dismissal of it suggests that you don't even know the basics of the topic, and shouldn't be mocking 'Joe Average' or the media for what you perceive to be their ignorance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
        Declanomous 10y ago
        Is this a smurf account? Why is this your first comment on a two day old account? My dismissal of the article was calculated, rather than casual. I read the Wikipedia page before commenting. That article, like many articles on Wikipedia, provides a great overview of the topic. However, it isn't a substitute for an actual education in the field. I stand by my claim that being able to read Wikipedia puts you on about the same level as the average media correspondent. I'd appreciate if you didn't insult me. You and the other comment I replied to are clearly over-estimating your knowledge, especially regarding terminology. Nowhere did I simplify anything for clarity or readability. I deliberately chose not to use jargon for readability, however my comment would have been clear and unambiguous to another biologist. Both of your comments were based on a pedantic reading of my comment that a trained biologist never would have made. Yes, the parts that make the epigenome are coded in DNA. However, the epigenome is not part of the genome. If I say "epigentic code" I'm specifically referring to the part of gene expression controlled by the epigenome. I'm not referring to the bits that end up making the epigenome (such as histones, etc) that end up making the parts of the epigenome. You each chose an incorrect interpretation in each case, when the alternative was perfectly obvious and correct.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Humans are the genetic disease that limits egg production. Other mammals don't have this "feature", so it is likely it is a suppressed gene that could be re-expressed. Although to your question about if it can be done in someone already living, that would be interesting indeed, but a different technique than re-expressing a gene, more like a workaround.
acaciapalm 10y ago
It continues to astound me how little we actually seem to know about anatomy, especially women's anatomy (hold the jokes, folks).
- M_Grey 10y ago
  We can't know much about what we haven't bothered to seriously study for very long.
- danharaj 10y ago
  Yea, especially for common disorders like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and Endometriosis. We don't know why they happen and our treatments are surprisingly meager considering how many women are affected in total.
  - acaciapalm 10y ago
    Then there was that huge study that showed the birth control pill causes loss of sex drive and depression[0]. [0]https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/03/pill-linked-depression-doctors-hormonal-contraceptives https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...
    - kevinnk 10y ago
      That study showed a "link" (i.e. correlation) between hormonal contraception and first diagnosis of depression or use of antidepressants. That's not the same as showing the pill causes depression! Even the study authors explicitly say that more study is needed before we can definitively say there is cause and effect.
      - acaciapalm 10y ago
        It's difficult to truly prove, but many women have noticed this and complained about it. It is only now that they are finally actually looking in to the possibility. I find it incredibly ironic that people take it as a given that women's hormones might affect moods (PMS, anyone?), but then brush off women's concerns that taking large doses of female hormones might --in fact!-- have an affect on mood.
thr328982 10y ago
> would raise the prospect of new treatments to allow older women to conceive This is a bit of ethical problem. Pregnancy at older age brings many risks to mother and child.
- danjoc 10y ago
  Yet, women who give birth later, live longer. http://time.com/2922235/mothers-birth-pregnancy-aging/ http://time.com/2922235/mothers-birth-pregnancy-aging/
  - heydenberk 10y ago
    From your article: "The natural ability to have a child at an older age likely indicates that a woman’s reproductive system is aging slowly, and therefore so is the rest of her body."
- acaciapalm 10y ago
  Sperm from older men also has higher risk of producing kids with genetic defects[0] [0]http://genetics.thetech.org/older-dads’-kids-higher-risk-genetic-disease http://genetics.thetech.org/older-dads’-kids-higher-risk-gen...
  - MollyR 10y ago
    Interesting, I hope they do in-depth study. I wonder how they'd deal with this issue from that article. "But what is also obvious is that it can be very difficult to untangle mom and dad’s contributions because they tend to track together in age. Older dads tend to have children with older moms." It's a pretty big confounding variable.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  ... as well as benefits. There's no absolutes.
pasbesoin 10y ago
What bothers me is, so many doctors and scientists saying "no" / "it doesn't happen", as opposed to "we don't know". They haven't observed it -- or, as often, been told/taught it by someone else. So, it doesn't happen -- it doesn't exist. At this point, I feel outright lied to. I've made life decisions bases on such statements that proved to be patently false and not at all backed by real science. And a lot more anecdote and "uninformed" practices of friends and others, that I initially avoided and regretted witnessing, based upon these "expert" opinions, has actually proven to be healthier and more productive.
- erroneousfunk 10y ago
  "I've made life decisions bases on such statements that proved to be patently false and not at all backed by real science." How would this knowledge impact a life decision? If your doctor told you "The ABVD I'm prescribing will make you infertile" and you decided to freeze your eggs, but later found out that ABVD didn't actually make you infertile, because of this phenomenon, well, sure, I could see that. But knowing the fact that ovaries are (possibly) capable of producing new eggs doesn't invalidate any of our current knowledge about how fertility declines with age, or the effectiveness of our current treatments for it. Great, our ovaries might produce new eggs in addition to merely storing them, AND all of the statistics about infertility, difficulty conceiving, and chromosomal abnormalities still apply just as they did before we knew that! Even if our ovaries are producing new eggs right now while we're completely unaware of it, all of the statistics we have about fertility already take this into account, by virtue of the fact that... well, they were measured on women with ovaries. Even if new fertility treatments are created out of this knowledge in the future, it's still many years out. First, this research has to be expanded, duplicated, and confirmed. Second, many many years of expensive clinical trials and research for the FDA need to be done. Third, there's a lot more that goes into fertility besides the eggs. And, while it's great that new research comes out, it's usually smart to hedge your bets and make life decisions that don't include the assumption that awesome new research is going to come out that will fix all your problems in the future. Also, I wouldn't be so harsh to criticize the doctors who told this to you. Science is about evolving knowledge and discovering new things. Prior to this discovery, all the existing research suggested that women were born with all the eggs they would ever have. They cut open ovaries, counted eggs, looked at them under microscopes, studied how they matured, watched ovaries in vivo, and documented the organ as thoroughly as they could. Science! Now we have some more science that was just done, and it described a new feature of ovaries that we didn't know about before. Awesome! This is like getting pissed of at Galileo because he lied about the number of planets in the solar system. I mean, sure, you could argue that Galileo should more accurately say "we only know about 6 planets, and there may be others out there" but, heck, there also could be some crazy cheat code out there to allow us to spontaneously regenerate limbs, or change our eye color on demand. You can't get made at doctors for saying: "No, your arm cannot be grown back" just because some crazy new research comes out five years later. We just don't know. As unsatisfying as it can be sometimes, the best we can do is act on the knowledge that we know now, and simply adapt as we discover new things.
theparanoid 10y ago
Buried the lead - "...or that egg follicles split into two or more parts due to damage from the treatment. The results should be seen as a curiosity rather than a discovery until replicated and investigated further, Albertini said."
epistasis 10y ago
>The findings were presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual conference in July and are described in a journal paper that is in review. WTF why is the Guardian reporting on this now? It would make more sense to report on the conference presentation, or to wait for the publication to be in general circulation. But reporting during the paper review is not timely, and if it doesn't pass peer-review you're going to be stuck with your pants down.

This seems to be one of many studies done that keep hinting that ovaries may continue to produce eggs. That's pretty awesome news especially for young women who have had to undergo treatments that may have killed off eggs early on. I also wonder how long they continue to be made. For instance if someone had a genetic disease that was somehow overcome with, say, genetic modification in some future time would her future eggs also carry the updated genetics?

Declanomous 10y ago
> If someone had a genetic disease that was somehow overcome with, say, genetic modification in some future time would her future eggs also carry the updated genetics? The answer is almost certainly yes, if the cells used to create the gametes had their DNA modified. The really interesting question is whether the epigenetic code changes in these cells. The discovery of epigenetics had huge implications in human development. If women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have, that would mean children are affected by the decisions made by their grandmother. If grandma lived through a famine, her grandchild might be predisposed to obesity due to epigenetic factors, regardless of what mom does.
- sambe 10y ago
  What do you mean by "epigenetic code"? Epigenetic means not encoded in DNA. Heritability is hotly debated (and anything positive in that area tends to be overstated in the media). Wiki has a few links on contested terms and taking caution vs enthusiasm of eg Chopra. There have also been several stories like this http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-interpreted-epigenetics-study-of-the-week http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-inte... over the last months.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    I realize epigenetic traits are not encoded in DNA. It's perfectly acceptable to use the term code to refer to an epigenetic "configuration". I didn't point out this fact because I figured the people reading Hacker News probably know that things can be encoded without using DNA, and I felt the distinction was needlessly pedantic. I recognize the limited scope of epigenetics, however epigenetics do play a significant role in gene expression. To say otherwise would be foolish. I know heritability of epigenetic traits is limited. I didn't claim epigenetic traits are being passed down between generations. If women are born with all of their eggs, the DNA in her eggs would DIRECTLY be affected by the environment of her mother. There is strong scientific evidence epigenetic traits are reliably inherited by each of the daughter cells during mitosis. Thus it is fully plausible the epigenetic code of a child could be affected by their grandmother. If what you know about epigenetics comes from Wikipedia, you are probably about as informed as "the media". As a formally trained lab biologist, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that biology is one of the worst scientific fields to learn about from Wikipedia, especially when it comes to discoveries in young fields like epigentics.
    - photogrammetry 10y ago
      They are encoded in DNA. They are patterns in the physical structure of DNA beyond the raw A,T,G,C etc. Please be accurate in HN comments, and don't oversimplify for 'clarity' or 'readability,' especially for a topic as complex as the heritability of epigenetic traits. Additionally, Wikipedia [0] is a quite satisfactory source for information on epigenetics. Your casual dismissal of it suggests that you don't even know the basics of the topic, and shouldn't be mocking 'Joe Average' or the media for what you perceive to be their ignorance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
      - Declanomous 10y ago
        Is this a smurf account? Why is this your first comment on a two day old account? My dismissal of the article was calculated, rather than casual. I read the Wikipedia page before commenting. That article, like many articles on Wikipedia, provides a great overview of the topic. However, it isn't a substitute for an actual education in the field. I stand by my claim that being able to read Wikipedia puts you on about the same level as the average media correspondent. I'd appreciate if you didn't insult me. You and the other comment I replied to are clearly over-estimating your knowledge, especially regarding terminology. Nowhere did I simplify anything for clarity or readability. I deliberately chose not to use jargon for readability, however my comment would have been clear and unambiguous to another biologist. Both of your comments were based on a pedantic reading of my comment that a trained biologist never would have made. Yes, the parts that make the epigenome are coded in DNA. However, the epigenome is not part of the genome. If I say "epigentic code" I'm specifically referring to the part of gene expression controlled by the epigenome. I'm not referring to the bits that end up making the epigenome (such as histones, etc) that end up making the parts of the epigenome. You each chose an incorrect interpretation in each case, when the alternative was perfectly obvious and correct.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cloudjacker 10y ago
Humans are the genetic disease that limits egg production. Other mammals don't have this "feature", so it is likely it is a suppressed gene that could be re-expressed. Although to your question about if it can be done in someone already living, that would be interesting indeed, but a different technique than re-expressing a gene, more like a workaround.

acaciapalm 10y ago

It continues to astound me how little we actually seem to know about anatomy, especially women's anatomy (hold the jokes, folks).

M_Grey 10y ago
We can't know much about what we haven't bothered to seriously study for very long.
danharaj 10y ago
Yea, especially for common disorders like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and Endometriosis. We don't know why they happen and our treatments are surprisingly meager considering how many women are affected in total.
- acaciapalm 10y ago
  Then there was that huge study that showed the birth control pill causes loss of sex drive and depression[0]. [0]https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/03/pill-linked-depression-doctors-hormonal-contraceptives https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...
  - kevinnk 10y ago
    That study showed a "link" (i.e. correlation) between hormonal contraception and first diagnosis of depression or use of antidepressants. That's not the same as showing the pill causes depression! Even the study authors explicitly say that more study is needed before we can definitively say there is cause and effect.
    - acaciapalm 10y ago
      It's difficult to truly prove, but many women have noticed this and complained about it. It is only now that they are finally actually looking in to the possibility. I find it incredibly ironic that people take it as a given that women's hormones might affect moods (PMS, anyone?), but then brush off women's concerns that taking large doses of female hormones might --in fact!-- have an affect on mood.

thr328982 10y ago

> would raise the prospect of new treatments to allow older women to conceive This is a bit of ethical problem. Pregnancy at older age brings many risks to mother and child.

danjoc 10y ago
Yet, women who give birth later, live longer. http://time.com/2922235/mothers-birth-pregnancy-aging/ http://time.com/2922235/mothers-birth-pregnancy-aging/
- heydenberk 10y ago
  From your article: "The natural ability to have a child at an older age likely indicates that a woman’s reproductive system is aging slowly, and therefore so is the rest of her body."
acaciapalm 10y ago
Sperm from older men also has higher risk of producing kids with genetic defects[0] [0]http://genetics.thetech.org/older-dads’-kids-higher-risk-genetic-disease http://genetics.thetech.org/older-dads’-kids-higher-risk-gen...
- MollyR 10y ago
  Interesting, I hope they do in-depth study. I wonder how they'd deal with this issue from that article. "But what is also obvious is that it can be very difficult to untangle mom and dad’s contributions because they tend to track together in age. Older dads tend to have children with older moms." It's a pretty big confounding variable.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
... as well as benefits. There's no absolutes.

pasbesoin 10y ago

What bothers me is, so many doctors and scientists saying "no" / "it doesn't happen", as opposed to "we don't know". They haven't observed it -- or, as often, been told/taught it by someone else. So, it doesn't happen -- it doesn't exist. At this point, I feel outright lied to. I've made life decisions bases on such statements that proved to be patently false and not at all backed by real science. And a lot more anecdote and "uninformed" practices of friends and others, that I initially avoided and regretted witnessing, based upon these "expert" opinions, has actually proven to be healthier and more productive.

erroneousfunk 10y ago
"I've made life decisions bases on such statements that proved to be patently false and not at all backed by real science." How would this knowledge impact a life decision? If your doctor told you "The ABVD I'm prescribing will make you infertile" and you decided to freeze your eggs, but later found out that ABVD didn't actually make you infertile, because of this phenomenon, well, sure, I could see that. But knowing the fact that ovaries are (possibly) capable of producing new eggs doesn't invalidate any of our current knowledge about how fertility declines with age, or the effectiveness of our current treatments for it. Great, our ovaries might produce new eggs in addition to merely storing them, AND all of the statistics about infertility, difficulty conceiving, and chromosomal abnormalities still apply just as they did before we knew that! Even if our ovaries are producing new eggs right now while we're completely unaware of it, all of the statistics we have about fertility already take this into account, by virtue of the fact that... well, they were measured on women with ovaries. Even if new fertility treatments are created out of this knowledge in the future, it's still many years out. First, this research has to be expanded, duplicated, and confirmed. Second, many many years of expensive clinical trials and research for the FDA need to be done. Third, there's a lot more that goes into fertility besides the eggs. And, while it's great that new research comes out, it's usually smart to hedge your bets and make life decisions that don't include the assumption that awesome new research is going to come out that will fix all your problems in the future. Also, I wouldn't be so harsh to criticize the doctors who told this to you. Science is about evolving knowledge and discovering new things. Prior to this discovery, all the existing research suggested that women were born with all the eggs they would ever have. They cut open ovaries, counted eggs, looked at them under microscopes, studied how they matured, watched ovaries in vivo, and documented the organ as thoroughly as they could. Science! Now we have some more science that was just done, and it described a new feature of ovaries that we didn't know about before. Awesome! This is like getting pissed of at Galileo because he lied about the number of planets in the solar system. I mean, sure, you could argue that Galileo should more accurately say "we only know about 6 planets, and there may be others out there" but, heck, there also could be some crazy cheat code out there to allow us to spontaneously regenerate limbs, or change our eye color on demand. You can't get made at doctors for saying: "No, your arm cannot be grown back" just because some crazy new research comes out five years later. We just don't know. As unsatisfying as it can be sometimes, the best we can do is act on the knowledge that we know now, and simply adapt as we discover new things.

theparanoid 10y ago

Buried the lead - "...or that egg follicles split into two or more parts due to damage from the treatment. The results should be seen as a curiosity rather than a discovery until replicated and investigated further, Albertini said."

epistasis 10y ago

>The findings were presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual conference in July and are described in a journal paper that is in review. WTF why is the Guardian reporting on this now? It would make more sense to report on the conference presentation, or to wait for the publication to be in general circulation. But reporting during the paper review is not timely, and if it doesn't pass peer-review you're going to be stuck with your pants down.