One in eight women infertile: Study    

London:
At least one in eight women and one in ten men in Britain have
experienced infertility, yet nearly half of them have not sought
medical help, finds a research.

The
findings showed that the prevalence of infertility was highest among
women aged 35-44 years and among men aged 35-54.

More
than a third of women who became mothers the age of 35 or older had
experienced a period of infertility compared to fewer than one in ten
women who had their first child before the age of 25.

Further,
the experience of infertility was more common among people with
higher socio-economic status, including women who had a university
degree and both women and men in managerial, professional or
technical employment, compared to people in lower status, routine
occupations.

Moreover,
women aged 50 or younger who had experienced infertility were more
likely to have symptoms of depression and feel dissatisfaction with
their sex life than those who had not.

These
associations were not observed for men, the researchers said. In
addition, those who reported experiencing infertility (defined as
unsuccessfully trying to become pregnant for a year or longer), 42.7
per cent of women and 46.8 per cent of men did not seek medical help
for the problem.

Those
who did seek help were more likely to have higher educational
qualifications, better jobs.

“We
were surprised that almost half of the people in our study who had
experienced infertility had not sought help,” said led
researcher Jessica Datta, Lecturer at London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine.

Possible
reasons for the inequalities between those who did and did not seek
help for infertility include not understanding or acknowledging that
a problem exists, fear of being labelled infertile, concerns about
the cost of treatment, the physical and psychological burden of
treatment, or simply not wanting to get pregnant, the researchers
suggested.

For
the study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, the team
analysed data from 15,162 women and men aged between 16 and 74 years
who took part in Britain’s third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes
and Lifestyles (Natsal-3) between 2010 and 2012.

IANS