Is unexplained infertility hereditary?
Is unexplained infertility genetic?
Unexplained infertility can be hereditary but depending on the cause. If the cause is something that can be inherited, it will be. The thing is that the difficulty is in finding the cause of unexplained infertility, for example, if we had a woman whose mother had premature ovarian failure, it may be something that that woman can herited and it’s of course something that we have to study. Of course, if we know that it won’t be unexplained because we’re gonna know what’s happening, the mother have premature menopause and the daughter has a low ovarian reserve at the younger age so, it’s possible that she also can have a premature menopause. So, it’s a tricky question because the thing is that of course, it can be hereditary but to say so, we have to know the cause and if we know the cause, it’s not unexplained.
I don’t think there is a gene which causes fertility problems. Fertility can be because of a lot of issues, a lot of different multifactorial and can be in either of the partner or both of them together so, there is no one particular chromosome or gene which carries this problem. So, there is no genetic inheritance of fertility issues.
It is common and depending on what level you have your assessments done it is more common. So people would suggest that at the stage that GP referral is made, there is around 40 percent of couples who have an unexplained problem. That does narrow down as we complete investigations but there is still a significant number of couples where we can’t identify an obvious cause and if you are talking about the tests of ovulation and sperm production or fallopian tubes, there is still a significant amount of couples who will have those normal tests but will still not be conceiving readily. Are any of those things hereditary? Not specifically as fertility problems are multifactorial
and because it is common it is not unsurprising that people will be given that label and their own children might be given that label as well so there are very few fertility things where you specifically say there is a gene that is affecting it but I don’t believe you could say you could inherit unexplained subfertility.
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