Fertell Tells Little
I was recently asked for my opinion on the newly FDA-approved home fertility test for men and women called Fertell. For about a hundred bucks, you can get an FSH test for women and a semen concentration/sperm motility assessment for men.
The key marketing point is, of course, privacy. I know how important that can be to men, especially. Given the choices, I'd rather take a blood test than masturbate in a clinic, any day.
The problem -- Fertell renders answers to only about three of the myriad questions at work in the whole infertility mystery.
Sure, it matters how many sperm cells there are in his semen and, yes, how those guys move can be crucial to their journey. Granted, both of those things, if they're the only problem, are pretty easily corrected for, even with fairly conventional treatment like IUI. And neither concentration nor motility is nearly as important as morphology, that is, the shape of sperm cells. But it's always good to have an idea, I guess, of those basic parameters.
The bigger problem, in my opinion, is the FSH measurement and, importantly, how such a measure and its impact on fertility are portrayed in the literature provided. Now -- a caveat -- I've not seen the accompanying literature for Fertell. But I've read some of the press put out on the product's US launch.
And this is why I've posted this in the category "Shopping For ART", as opposed to the more fertility-basic "Why Am I Here?" on this blog: by the time a consumer has access to the fine print, even if it's wonderfully educational, they've purchased the product. Sure, there are likely good return policies if the buyer's dissatisfied, but how many of us go through the trouble? The stuff that's more likely to be steering folks to buy are the "news reports", often based on manufacturer press releases.
Take, for example, US News & World Report's write-up in which Deborah Kotz refers to FSH as a hormone that "rises as a woman nears menopause."
Well, yes. And no.
FSH can also rise when a woman is under extreme stress. Or when she has certain untreated or poorly treated health conditions. A 20-something year old woman with a high FSH isn't necessarily always "near" menopause.
Similarly, men should be informed of the simple yet profound fact that their bodies, when functioning optimally, are constantly making new sperm cells (unlike women, who do not make new oocytes during their lifespan... we think...) So, any single test of this particular kind -- the FSH for women and the SA for men -- actually renders nothing more than a snapshot into continual processes that can sometimes ameliorate themselves with or without conscious effort.
In her second book, incredibly titled The Fertile Female: How the Power of Longing for a Child Can Save Your Life and Change the World, the once-FSH-challenged Julia Indichova (who went on in her 40's to conceive her second child naturally) expresses hope that her older readers especially will feel their commitment strengthened "to pursue motherhood without succumbing to the collective hysteria of the last good egg."
Oversimplification of the complex facts about reproductive hormones and cell parameters can sometimes fuel the fires of that collective hysteria. I'm interested in seeing how the test kit does on the market.
Link: Health : New Home Screening Test for Infertility - US News and World Report.
