The past decade has seen growing interest in ovarian stimulation protocols with GnRH antagonists in an effort to reduce the incidence of potential complications, such as cyst formation and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, and thus improve the clinical experience for patients. Current assisted reproductive technique programmes also increasingly utilize milder protocols for ovarian stimulation....

BACKGROUND Administration of recombinant luteinizing hormone (rLH) in controlled ovarian hyperstimulation may benefit a subpopulation of patients. However, late follicular phase administration of high doses of rLH may also reduce the size of the follicular cohort and promote monofollicular development. METHODS To determine if rLH in late follicular development had a negative impact on follicu...

BACKGROUND During the establishment of the maternal blood circulation around the implanting human embryo, maternal peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) directly contact trophoblasts. To determine the physiological significance of this interaction, the effects of PBMC obtained from pregnant women on the proliferative and invasive properties of a human choriocarcinoma cell line, BeWo cells, ...

In order to evaluate the efficacy and safety of recombinant human follicle stimulating hormone (r-hFSH) in combination with urinary human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) to induce spermatogenesis and fertility in gonadotrophin-deficient men, we conducted a prospective, open, non-comparative multicentre study in two Australian academic medical centres. Ten men with gonadotrophin deficiency requiri...

We previously defined a cholesterol recognition/interaction amino acid consensus (CRAC; ATVLNYYVWRDNS) in the carboxyl terminus of the peripheral-type benzodiazepine receptor (PBR), an outer mitochondrial membrane protein involved in the regulation of cholesterol transport into the mitochondria, the rate-determining step in steroid biosynthesis. We examined (i) the PBR-cholesterol interaction b...

BACKGROUND Hyperglycosylated human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG-h) contains larger and more complex carbohydrate chains than regular human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). hCG-h is thought to be the major form of hCG produced by testicular cancers and it has been suggested to play a key role in tumor invasion, but studies on hCG-h in testicular cancer are limited. We studied whether serum hCG is hy...

The aim of this review was to summarize previously published classifications for ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), as well as to analyse the available methods for preventing OHSS. Withholding hCG and cycle cancellation--once the main methods of preventing OHSS--are now seldom used. There is a growing body of evidence to support the use of coasting to prevent OHSS, without cycle cancella...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate, retrospectively, the roles of endogenous and exogenous luteinising hormone (LH) activity on live birth rate in ovulation induction cycles. METHODS Associations between LH activity at baseline, end of stimulation and live birth rate were analysed in relation to patient characteristics, baseline and end of stimulation variables in WHO group II anovulatory women (n = 155) ...

BACKGROUND Results on sera and calibrators vary 1.4- to 2.3-fold among commercial human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) assays. The relative contributions of calibrators, standards, hCG charge isoforms, and major structural variants to this variation have not been quantified. METHODS Purified hCG was separated by isoelectric focusing into four fractions with pI ranges of 3-4, 4-5, 5-6, and 6-7. ...