Premature Ovarian Failure(Diagnosed at Age 15) any pointers please...........

[talitha.kaum]

hi maybe11,
ur reply ws very informative.

What i meant by natural estrogen is :
i have been advised to take premarin tabs() from age 26 b.y the new RE. for bone health and improve while ttc at later stage.
Currently am single.Premarin is the commercial name for compound drug consisting primarily of conjugated estrogens. Isolated from mare's urine (PREgnant MARes' urINe), it is manufactured by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
Along wid my ayurvedic med i have been continously taking it wid the permission of the doc.found it to be less side effects compared to the Novelon tabs,progesterone tabs i used to take.


Well if u have idea of women with high FSH >50 have been able to concieve through IVF or other proc.I am looking for a life partner and i have to tell my medical condition.I know i will have to answer this questions as to wat are the chances of conception? and what are the procedures etc? have there been success rates and so on.
I have no idea in this regard and most of the posts are by women wid high fsh <40.your views in this regard would be helpful.
any tstimony sites that anyone knows of would be very very helpful.

regarding ovulation i had a few doubts.
When we are on HRT,and get the cycles,we dont ovulate.am I right? coz its an arteficial set up of hormones which consequently leads to shedding of the endometrium.
Does that mean when i get my cycles without HRT ovulation happens?

FYI:For 3 yrs,i have been taking premarin,had no cycles for these 3 yrs.This yr after the scan reports showed signs of normalcy inspite of no cycles,i took premarin+progesterone,and got the cycles.the next month,didnt take progesteron,.only premarin and still got cycles on time.exact 28 days.
this month i havent taken premarin or progesterone and waiting.its almost 30 days and havent got yet.

I realize POF is unpredictable.but nevertheless am waiting wid hope.

thanks,
TK

[maybe11]

Hi talitha,

I can totally relate to your situation! I was also single when I got my diagnosis. It is really hard to both be looking for the partner one wants to be with, and at the same time to have to deal with this diagnosis (and on top of it with the uncertainty of how he might react to it)!

From the point of view of this type of conversation with him, for me it was important to keep in mind the DE (donor egg) option. It is definitely not our first choice, and I myself am trying first with my own eggs. But especially for a man for whom it would be at least as important to be with you as for his kids to have exactly your genes, this might be in some ways a positive option (since with DE you can actually experience pregnancy, and also the kids would be his biologically). Again, I myself am leaving this option for later - but it is nice to know that it is there, if and when we are ready for it. Btw the chances of success with DE are really good for POFers, so at least this is one thing in our advantage. The cost must depend on where you live and where you have the procedure, but it shouldn't be much more than an IVF cycle.

In regard to the chances of pregnancy with our own eggs, they are pretty gloomy. One thing you have on your side is your age. The official statistics are that the chances of pregnancy if you are on HRT and no other treatment are somewhere around 8-10% overall, if you keep trying forevern kind of. So not very exciting. As far as I can tell, until recently people were not really trying any special protocols to try to improve on this, because it was believed that POF was simply early menopause and so you can't do much. Now there is evidence that this is not the case, and that enough of us actually have follicles; but still there is something wrong because of which they don't develop normally and do not ovulate. So now some doctors are trying protocols on women with POF too, and there are reports of success but it is very hard to tell what are the rates since the whole process is not organized. As for published controlled studies, there are only a handful of them, most old and with only like 15 POF women in them. The most exciting of them that I have seen had 30% ovulation rate and 16% pregnancy rate in 1 cycle (without IVF, just with medications). This to me is very encouraging; but this study was also small and has not been repeated, so it's not clear how it will turn out (but at least it's recent). One thing I feel is that right now there is a lot of research and Doctors being interested in POF and having hope that maybe eventually there will be a protocol that might work for some of the POFers. If this turns out to be correct, and especially given your age, it might one day be of help to you .

About the estrogens you have been taking. Premarin is not considered a natural estrogen I think; and a lot of people believe that it is better to be on a natural estrogen - such as the estradiols in Vivelle Dot, Climara, Estrace - these are the names in the US, there must be equivalents where you are. I have not heard of POFers now being on premarin - it seems that all the REs here recommend some of these natural ones. I think it probably has to do with the info in the Health Information section on Premarin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (which may or may not apply to us, because in this study the women were mainly >50 years old, and this is believed to be different than POF).

My understanding is that your Drs saying that "Got only 2 cycles and then no cycles even on tabs.Doc said eggs in the ovary are not there or mature and hence cant expect a normal period." is incorrect. My understanding is that the point of us taking an estrogen (in that case for you the progynova) is to provide enough estrogen for our body since we already assume/know that we are not making enough. You not getting a period after taking meprate (which seems to be the same as provera) means that the estrogen pills you took were not enough to build enough lining for you, and so there wasn't what to shed after you took the provera. So it's a good question why this was the case; I'm not a doctor so I am not sure; but I have read that some women don't build as much lining when they are on "estradiol valeriate" - which is what the progynova is. However they might respond differently to the other types of estrogen; for example when I'm on the patches I always have good lining; the 1 time I was on estradiol valeriate, it was a huge amount and my E2 reached to 4000; even with so much E2 my lining was only around 4mm.
So in other words, one possibility is that the choice of progynova instead of a different type of estrogen might have contributed to you not getting periods at that time.


You should definitely be taking the premarin or whatever other estrogen with some progesterone or provera equivalent; I was not sure from what you've written whether you have been taking them in addition to the premarin. But if you do not supplement with progesterone or equivalent, it's well established that premarin only would increase the chances of some cancers. The progesterone or equivalent needs to be taken at least once in 2-3 months, with the standard recommendation being once per month (and each time it's for the 10-12 days or so).

About HRT and ovulation - it is possible that we could ovulate on the HRT. The statistics are that most of the women who become pregnant were on HRT at that time (and this is at least partially because almost all POF women are on HRT all the time); so it can clearly happen. Also most researchers seem to believe that the chances of ovulation are higher if we are on HRT; but I am not sure if this is proven.
On the other hand, once you take progesterone/provera, this should bring a period (assuming you had built enough lining), even if you did not ovulate.

Btw have you tried ovulation sticks. Depending on how high your LH is currently, it could be useful (it's useful if your LH is not too high). Once you get your period, it's difficult to tell whether there was an ovulation - but if you are checking with LH sticks and you think you could detect ovulation, this can be confirmed with a progesterone test.

wow, this was a long post!
Let me know if you have other questions. Sorry that you are going through this, best of luck!

[jane3]

HI Tahlith K.,
My best friend has the same issue n since she is very dear to me I am very much upset to see her depressed.
She is just 18 yrs old n wen she saw a endo as she stopped gettin her periods, endo said she wud never be able to conceive in future n asked her to take Novelon tabs for may be 20 yrs or so...
So I wanted to know whether this Panchkarma therapy is helpful or are there ny side effects of Novelon U know of..?

Also her mother is worried about her future marriage as endo said she wont even be able to carry a child in future bt gynaec said its possible thru IVF...

She is very much depressed n it has changed her life completely, I don wanna lose her.

Its a long time u posted ur comments. Am eagerly waitin for ur reply.. PLs help

[jane3]

hi maybe11,
MY frnd also suffers from POF. i recently joined this thread .
Its been almost 2 yrs before u posted u weere tryin to get preg wid ur own eggs..!!!

Please give me some details as in how cud u do it... Is it possible thru IVF?
my friend is very much worried regardin her future..

PLs help me wid information n all oder details!

Thank y