2023年经济学人 荷尔蒙测试无法正确检测女性生育能力(1)（在线收听）

    More evidence that hormone testing for women's fertility does not work.

    更多证据表明，检测女性生育能力的荷尔蒙测试并不奏效。

    Women seeking to defer motherhood are often encouraged to check their fertility.

    人们通常会鼓励希望推迟生育时间的女性检测自己的生育能力。

    Though fecundity is tied to age, the effect of time's passage varies.

    虽然生育能力与年龄有关，但其对不同人的影响不同。

    Some 35-year-olds find they cannot get pregnant.

    一些人35岁发现自己无法怀孕。

    Others manage at the first attempt.

    还有人第一次尝试就能成功。

    The main causes of fertility's reduction with advancing years are declines in the number and quality of the eggs in a woman's ovaries.

    生育能力随着年龄增长而下降的主要原因是，女性年龄越大，卵巢中卵子的数量越少，质量越低。

    Unlike men, who manufacture sperm throughout their post-pubertal lives, albeit in ever-decreasing quantities, all of a woman's potential eggs develop while she is still a fetus.

    而男性则不同。虽然男性制造精子的数量会不断减少，但他们在青春期后始终都在制造精子；而女性的所有卵子都是在胎儿时期开始发育的。

    A newborn girl has over 1m of them.

    一个刚出生的女孩有100多万个卵子。

    By puberty, she is left with about 400,000.

    到了青春期，就只剩下大约40万。

    When the menopause arrives, that has been whittled down below 1,000, which are likely to be duds.

    到了更年期，卵子数量会低于1000，并且很可能质量很低。

    But fertility tests currently on offer neither count the number of eggs remaining nor assess their quality.

    但目前为女性提供的生育测试既不计算其剩余的卵子数量，也不评估卵子的质量。

    Rather, they rely on an indirect approach - sampling what are hoped to be relevant hormones.

    这些测试依赖于一种间接的方法——对可能与女性生育能力相关的荷尔蒙进行采样。

    Hormone tests do have some value in estimating the timing of menopause and the success of harvesting eggs for in vitro fertilisation.

    荷尔蒙测试在预测更年期的时间和预测采集卵子进行体外受精的成功率方面确实有一定的价值。

    But forecasting pregnancy?

    但在预测怀孕方面呢？

    The evidence suggests that they can't.

    证据表明，荷尔蒙测试在这方面没有效果。

    One test-sceptic is Anne Steiner of the Duke Fertility Centre, in North Carolina.

    北卡罗来纳州杜克生育中心的安妮·斯坦纳就对测试持怀疑态度。

    She suspects hormone tests do indicate how many eggs are left to a woman, but that this is not what matters - rather, it is the eggs' quality which is crucial.

    她认为荷尔蒙测试确实能检测一个女人还剩下多少卵子，但这并不是问题的关键——卵子的质量才是关键。

    Between 2008 and 2016 Dr. Steiner and her colleagues ran the Time to Conceive study.

    2008至2016年，斯坦纳博士和她的同事们进行了“怀孕时间”研究。

    Its purpose was to determine whether hormone levels could indeed assess a woman's fertility, independent of her age.

    目的是在不考虑年龄的情况下，确定荷尔蒙水平是否能够评估女性的生育能力。

    The team found then that those levels had no value in predicting pregnancy in the year subsequent to testing.

    研究小组随后发现，荷尔蒙水平测试无法预测一年内是否能够怀孕。

    Now, in a follow up to the original investigation, just published in Fertility and Sterility, Dr. Steiner has shown that they have no longer-term predictive power, either.

    现在，在刚刚发表在《生育与不育》期刊上的后续研究中，斯坦纳博士表明，荷尔蒙水平也无法用于更长期的预测。