Fecundability during the reproductive life. The ages at which your chances are the highest of getting pregnant is from 16 to 30 years old

Infertility or sterility?

• Infertility refers to the inability to conceive after a year of regular intercourse without contraception.
• Sterility refers to the complete inability to conceive without medical intervention.

Infertility

Roughly 1 in 6 couples in the Western world are infertile. However, several of these couples go on to conceive naturally after a year of trying and many couples will use a fertility monitor to speed up the process. Some experts predict a rise in infertility among couples in the future, with 1 in 3 couples being infertile within ten years. This increase in infertility is due to many causes:

• Delayed parenthood: in the US, the proportion of women having their first baby after the age of 30 has quadrupled since 1975.
• The fecundability (or ability to conceive) of women falls by 3 - 5% each year after reaching 30, and decreases by an even faster rate after reaching 40.
• Increased prevalence of obesity
• Increased prevalence of STDs
• General changes in lifestyle, food, environment etc

Like all fertility aids, DuoFertility can be very useful in some cases and less so in others.

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Scientific references (Click here)

Definition and prevalence of subfertility and infertility.

Hum Reprod. 2005 May;20(5):1144-7. Epub 2005 Mar 31..

Gnoth C, Godehardt E, Frank-Herrmann P, Friol K, Tigges J, Freundl G.

Center for Family Planning, Gynaecological Endocrinology & Reproductive Medicine Grevenbroich, Heinrich-Heine University of Duesseldorf, Germany.

A common definition of sub- and infertility is very important for the appropriate management of infertility. Subfertility generally describes any form of reduced fertility with prolonged time of unwanted non-conception? . Infertility may be used synonymously with sterility with only sporadically occurring spontaneous pregnancies. The major factor affecting the individual spontaneous pregnancy prospect is the time of unwanted non-conception which determines the grading of subfertility. Most of the pregnancies occur in the first six cycles with intercourse in the fertile phase (80%). After that, serious subfertility must be assumed in every second couple (10%) although--after 12 unsuccessful cycles--untreated live birth rates among them will reach nearly 55% in the next 36 months. Thereafter (48 months), approximately 5% of the couples are definitive infertile with a nearly zero chance of becoming spontaneously pregnant in the future. With age, cumulative probabilities of conception decline because heterogeneity in fecundity increases due to a higher proportion of infertile couples. In truly fertile couples cumulative probabilities of conception are probably age independent. Under appropriate circumstances a basic? infertility work-up after six unsuccessful cycles with fertility-focused intercourse will identify couples with significant infertility problems to avoid both infertility under- and over-treatment, regardless of age: Couples with a reasonably good prognosis (e.g. unexplained infertility) may be encouraged to wait because even with treatment they do not have a better chance of conceiving. The others may benefit from an early resort to assisted reproduction treatment.