This New Technique Doesn’t Just Help Women Conceive Again. It Has Anti-Aging Benefits Too

For many women, the idea of becoming menopausal is quite unwelcome. And it’s pretty understandable because of the unpleasant changes that come with it, and its implication. Menopause — the final menstrual period — typically occurs between the ages of 40 and 58. It’s an event that signals a certain finality — with it comes a woman’s final hope of bearing children. This is the reality that the world has known since the beginning of time. And now that’s about to change.

Since last year, a team of experts has been working on a way to revive menopausal ovaries. And it looks like they are making serious progress.

The team, led by Dr. Konstantinos Sfakianoudis, has been experimenting with a new technique that involves Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) injections. PRP injections are nothing new, of course. What’s new is using the patient’s own genetic material to get the transfusions from. Meaning, there’s no donor needed, just the patient’s own blood. While this technique is already being used in repairing damaged bones and muscles, this is the first time it is being used to stimulate tissue regeneration in a menopausal woman’s otherwise dead ovaries.

“It offers a window of hope that menopausal women will be able to get pregnant using their own genetic material,” Dr. Sfakianoudis was quoted as saying in a report published by New Scientist last year.

The treatment works by revitalizing the ovaries of women who are already at the menopausal stage. By injecting PRP from a woman’s own blood, the functionality of her cells and tissues are supposed to be restored to a point where her ovaries are able to produce healthy egg cells once again, and these egg cells can then be fertilized.

The technique has been undergoing preclinical trials since May 2016. And now it has been given the go signal to proceed to the next phase of testing. As Futurism reports, the clinical trials will be conducted starting this February at the Genesis Health Clinic in Athens, Greece.

So far, 60 women have undergone the treatment during the preclinical trials. And the success rate is quite impressive at 75%, meaning, 45 of the women exhibited renewed capability of conceiving both the natural way and in vitro fertilization. By the end of the trials, 9 of the women actually got pregnant.

Those results are promising enough. But there’s more.

Apart from enabling menopausal women to have children again, the treatment also helped rejuvenate the women themselves, returning their hormones back to their once youthful states and levels. In other words, the treatment did more than just restore the women’s capability to bear children again. It also made them young again as the PRP injections seemed to help delay menopausal symptoms which are practically signs of aging.

The anti-aging effect is just a bonus. But for women who have given up all hopes of being able to conceive at a late age, the treatment (if successful) is almost equivalent to a miracle.