I’m not ovaryacting* — AMH is cool

In a previous post on what it takes to be an egg donor, I mentioned that the very first hurdle is an ‘AMH’ test. But what is AMH? It stands for Anti-Müllerian Hormone, and it measures a woman’s ovarian reserve. I’m not being sarcastic — I actually do think it’s pretty cool. In fact, I was planning on doing a whole post on AMH, with lots of cool graphs showing it’s mean and 90th percentile values as a function of age, etc.

And then I realized that nobody wants to read that.

It’s fine! I’m not offended. I probably wouldn’t read a blog post with graphs related to your specific medical condition either. No offense.

But 1 in 8 women struggle with infertility. Sure — there are many other factors which also affect fertility — but low ovarian reserve can be a major factor for some of those women, and it’s also something that ALL women will face at some point in their lives (just hopefully after they’re done having kids).

So instead of bombarding you with graphs, here are three simple facts about AMH:

1. It measures both the quantity and quality of follicles left in one’s ovaries.
2. It’s typically around 3 (ignoring the ng/ml units) for women under 30, but it falls sharply toward zero between 30-50 years.
3. It’s much more stable over the course of a monthly cycle than the other hormones that can probe ovarian reserve, making it a more reliable tracer.

I’m not a (medical) doctor, but I do wonder why — if this simple blood test is so powerful — it’s not something that is typically done earlier. It took me visiting three different fertility clinics in three different countries before mine was finally tested. And lo-and-behold, it was vanishingly small. Like, over an order of magnitude lower than average.

Hence the ovarian failure diagnosis. Again, this is something every woman eventually goes through. Women with premature ovarian failure (like me) just happen to be a decade or two earlier than most.

What is the AMH requirement for donors?

In Belgium, we were told that our egg donor had to have an AMH level between 2-6, where the high end of the range puts those (apparently) very fertile women at risk for additional complications. Marie’s test result came back at 2.16. Within range!

At first, I think Marie was a bit disappointed that her level wasn’t higher. (Marie is an overachiever — another trait we share). But according to the graphs I already agreed not to bore you with, she’s actually above average for her age. Her level is also ~15x higher than mine, which sounds pretty darn good to me.

So what are the odds of this donation cycle actually working? Well, for women with an AMH level <0.5 (like mine), a (normal) IVF cycle will only make it to embryo transfer 1/3 of the time, and those embryos have an even smaller chance than normal of sticking. The good news is that with an AMH level >2 (like Marie has), studies suggest that an IVF cycle will result in an embryo transfer 99% of the time.

Of course, having an embryo to transfer is a necessary — but not sufficient — step toward a full-blown pregnancy. The exact probability at that stage depends on many factors, including number of embryos transferred, embryo quality, and whether it was a 3- or 5-day transfer. More on that to come.

In summary (TL;DR), Marie’s AMH is above average for her age, so that’s about the best we can hope for. Also, if you are a woman struggling to conceive, ask your doctor to check your AMH.

Reference: For more fun facts about AMH, see IVF1

*The title was borrowed from justovaryacting.com