Folliculogenesis in vivo™ monitoring is far better than current home-use fertility self-help tools

And here is again why

The FIV™-monitoring Ovulona™ is superior compared to existing commercial products in the home-use fertility self-help category, such as the urinalysis hormone (LH) kits or OPKs and their improved electronic iteration, and other such products. Superior on several levels.

Unprecedented user-friendly design coupled with unprecedented accuracy, liberating the user from the vagaries of imperfect ovulation method-based probabilities.

That must be the main one for the TTC [Trying To Conceive] people, but additional attributes are no less significant. Multi-purpose applicability including but not limited to built-in early pregnancy detection and early pregnancy monitoring. That’s to help manage and deal with the inherently high prevalence of early embryonic mortality [EEM], the chief complication of human gestation. (See https://biozhena.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/about-the-added-bonus-of-folliculogenesis-monitoring-automatic-pregnancy-detection .)

When the TTC hurdle is successfully dealt with, the EEM is the next obstacle on the way to overcoming the sub-fertility issue. Just think about this for a moment. The EEM is Mother Nature’s design to deal with problems that quite likely lead to the TTC challenge (aka sub-fertility or even infertility) in the first place…

There is more to the superior attributes of the FIV technology [FIV = Folliculogenesis In Vivo]. Readily thought about is non-invasive natural birth control. The Ovulona is an electronic tool for 21st Century’s NFP and/or FAM. Natural Family Planning and Fertility Awareness Method, both of which we envision under the umbrella of Scientific Family Planning™, SFP™.

Furthermore, once you become aware of how Folliculogenesis In Vivo works, it will be less of a surprise to see that the Ovulona tissue biosensor will also provide a nice and easy cervical cancer screen – and prospectively screening for other pathologies, and their treatment…

Treatment (as opposed to diagnosis), you wonder what that is about? It’s about the vaginal tissues being the most efficient route for administration of medications, and very logical for a topical treatment, wouldn’t you think? Logical and potentially pretty effective for public health, once the tool has become widely used due to its affordability and mass-market acceptance. That’s the vision.

Of course, there are still other applications that the male managers of investment coffers tend to view as women’s issues that are not their concern, such as management of PMS and its debilitating form the PMDD, such as proper evaluation of EDD and EDC (Expected Date of Delivery, and of Confinement), such as hormone therapy and related matters. All these are big issues of public health, the sentiments of said managers of other people’s money notwithstanding.

Now, back to the primary and initial use of the FIV-tracking Ovulona.

Only the Ovulona can determine the three days of the fertile window of opportunity to conceive, unperturbed by the talk out there – by the proponents of the imperfect ovulation measures – about six days, which talk stems from a certain highly publicized and yet flawed study in 1995… A publication (in NEJM) that caused a sensation at the time by shortening the NFP’s prescribed period of abstinence from the previous too long imposition to the less off-putting 6 days).

Detection of the 3 fertile days is possible because the Ovulona monitors the process of folliculogenesis, and it does it by sensing the tissues in the reproductive tract where the site of action is. Where the body integrates and responds to signals from the ovary and from the brain. That is the action, as opposed to the presence of this or that hormone in blood or urine or any other body fluid.

The determination of the three days window is absolutely necessary because only that way can conception be either assisted or avoided with the required accuracy. The existing home-use fertility tracking commercial products cannot do that, and that is why they speak about a longer and fuzzy fertile window. See preceding and older posts in this blog if you want to get a better understanding of all that which is covered by the short word fuzzy. You will also get the long word (peri-ovulation methods) if you delve into the matter that way.

The existing commercial products cannot be used, either, for an attempt at baby gender pre-selection by timing conception with respect to ovulation. They cannot do that because they do not anticipate ovulation accurately and they do not detect ovulation (they merely assume its occurrence).

Joan Miro – Birth World

Consequently, those techniques cannot distinguish between 2 or 3 days before and the day of ovulation. This is to try for a boy or for a girl, respectively, or to TTC, or to avoid conception. The commercially available technologies do not detect ovulation independently of the one predictive element they test for – or two such elements, LH and E2, in the case of the urine-analyzing gadget now sold by Inverness/SPD GmbH. It is not unlike groping in the dark… The other electronic gadget out there, the one offered by Zetek, is tracking indirectly the effect of the same hormone (estrogen) in two body fluids with two probes at two different times during the menstrual cycle. And your old BBT method tracks indirectly the effect of progesterone that you know causes the BBT to go up a bit after ovulation, albeit with a statistical uncertainty of + or – 3 days (and a poor signal to noise ratio at that).

The thing that the old *Imperfect Measures* tools detect is an input in the hormone signaling mechanism they talk about but of which mechanism they monitor merely that one input hormone signal (or two). However, the boundaries of the fertile window are not single hormone events; hormone monitoring (direct or indirect) cannot define the fertile window.

The existing products do not determine the fertile window of 3 days because they monitor this or that remote parameter that only reflects some aspect of the process that culminates in ovulation. They only detect a hormone signal that says “ovulation can happen about now” (LH), or a signal that says “ovulation has occurred” (BBT); or some reflect estrogen (e.g., through saliva appearance). Estrogen elevates before LH but not far enough ahead, and certainly it does not indicate the start of the fertile window nor the end of the window, which is ovulation. A saliva property is a fuzzy detector of estrogen, much like the vaginal fluid’s tactile and visual examination practiced in some circles.

Clock Explosion by Salvador Dali

Significantly, the hormones that anticipate ovulation do not mean that ovulation occurs right away or even at all. They just signal that the body is ready. It is essential to actually detect the occurrence of ovulation independently of prediction, and only our technology does that. Stress often either delays or even prevents ovulation, and only the Ovulona™ detects this. You can again find some earlier posts with more details about this.

There are also earlier posts about the variability of ovulation times from cycle to cycle in the same woman (as well as across a population), and the variability can be more than the width of the fertile window, more than the said 3 days. That 3 day span tends to also be the statistical uncertainty of the old techniques referenced here, plus or minus 3 days.

Serious consequences ensue for the users of the old *Imperfect Measures* techniques, whether employed to achieve pregnancy or to avoid it. Look at the small example from a small test-of-concept study by an independent NFP research-and-teaching group.

In the four recorded cycles of a childless 41-years old patient, the Ovulona prototype captured 3 delayed ovulations out of the 4 recorded cycles. In only one of the four cycles did the LH agree with our ovulation marker while Peak Mucus indication was one day late in that cycle. In the three cycles with delayed ovulation, the delays were:

In cycle 1:  4 days after LH kit positive and 3 days after Peak Mucus.

In cycle 3:  3 days after LH kit positive and 2 days after Peak Mucus.

In cycle 4:  1 day after LH kit positive and 2 days after Peak Mucus.

In another post in this blog, we showed how the test data divides the NFP clinic patients’ results into two categories that we termed regular and irregular (challenged). To avoid confusion with the traditional usage of the term regular/irregular in the context of menstrual cycles, we shall refer to the two categories as ordinary and challenged, respectively. Cycle 2 is an ordinary cycle (with LH and Peak mucus within 1 day of ovulation marker day) versus the other records showing challenged cycles with delayed ovulation.

The other challenged cycles from the study are tabulated below here, and you will note that they are quite numerous even in the small study of just 10 women with 2 cycle records each. Even in that small population of real life women, 45% cycles were challenged. You also see that the ovulation delays occur at any age (here from 19 to 41 years of age), and regardless of parity (that is, regardless of whether the woman has ever borne children or not):

In the table of ovulation days indicated by the three techniques, O stands for the ovulation marker of Ovulona prototype, LH means LH kit (OPK) positive result, and Pk means Peak Mucus result (as taught by NFP teachers).

As noted above, LH and Pk are in all these cycles lower than the O values, which relationship defines the category of challenged cycles (ovulation delayed with respect to given hormone signal). The delays in this small sample from a small pilot study are from 2 days to 4 days with respect to LH, and from 2 to 3 days with respect to Pk; two cycles are without any LH surge detection.

We also note that our self-diagnostic process – while generating the detailed folliculogenesis profile data for optional analysis by the woman’s healthcare provider – is not unpleasant as is urine sampling, and is not cumbersome, confusing or prone to subjective misinterpretation of results as the other technologies tend to be.

We can and we do envisage the Ovulona to become a friendly routine for the women of the 21st century, everywhere. The existing home-use fertility monitoring products could not aspire to play that role. Hormones in body fluids are only of temporary utility for TTC. Against that, FIV (or Folliculogenesis In Vivo) is not only a superior tool for TTC but it goes beyond that first use – to be of unprecedented and unique service in personalized women’s healthcare for years to come.

See earlier posts in this blog about how symptoms (such as PMS symptoms) vary depending on the day of cycle and on the health conditions of any woman. It is known that female patients respond to therapy differently in relation to their menstrual cycle, i.e., in relation to folliculogenesis. That relationship to the FIV profile is THE fundamental guiding principle of personalized medicine for women.

A new era of obstetrics and gynecology in the offing.

Folliculogenesis in vivo for women’s healthcare – the vision  (from Space perspective, courtesy of NASA)

Yes, dear, contingent upon funding…

        STOP PRESS

For more information go to the 2012 post “The fallacy of ovulation calculators, calendars and circulating-hormone detectors” at https://biozhena.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/the-fallacy-of-ovulation-calculators-calendars-and-circulating-hormone-detectors/

Tags: bioZhena, conception, fertility, folliculogenesis, infertility, LH kit, natural family planning, NFP, ovulation, trying-to-conceive, TTC