In humans, the fertility in female declines slowly from the age of 30 years [1,2]. Embryo implanting ability and survival start declining gradually after 30 years of age, but by more than two thirds after 40 years and in younger women with reduced ovarian reserve [3]. While decline in the frequency of intercourse is one of the reasons, reduction in the quality of either the embryos arising from...

Empirical evidence for declines in fitness components (survival and reproductive performance) with age has recently accumulated in wild populations, highlighting that the process of senescence is nearly ubiquitous in the living world. Senescence patterns are highly variable among species and current evolutionary theories of ageing propose that such variation can be accounted for by differences ...

One of the most intriguing aspects of ageing is how different the ageing process is from person to person: some maintain their physical and cognitive abilities throughout a long life while others lose these abilities rather early in adult life. The basis for this variation is largely an enigma. In this review some of the most prominent ageing theories are described and compared with results fro...

A pioneer of ageing research, August Weismann has established two rather opposing concepts for aging and even today both gather numerous followers. One is the adaptive concept, according to which ageing has evolved to cleanse the population from old, nonreproductive consumers. The other, non-adaptive concept suggests that ageing is due to greater weight on early survival / reproduction rather t...

BACKGROUND Women have been able to delay childbearing since effective contraception became available in the 1960s. However, fertility decreases with increasing maternal age. A slow but steady decrease in fertility is observed in women aged between 30 and 35 years, which is followed by an accelerated decline among women aged over 35 years. A combination of delayed childbearing and reduced fecund...

Eusocial insects provide special opportunities to elucidate the evolution of ageing as queens have apparently evaded costs of reproduction and reversed the fecundity-longevity trade-off generally observed in non-social organisms. But how reproduction affects longevity in eusocial insects has rarely been tested experimentally. In this study, we took advantage of the reproductive plasticity of wo...

FOXL2 is a transcription factor that is essential for ovarian function and maintenance, the germline mutations of which are responsible for the Blepharophimosis Ptosis Epicanthus-inversus Syndrome (BPES), often associated with premature ovarian failure. Recent evidence has linked FOXL2 downregulation or somatic mutation (p.Cys134Trp) to cancer, although underlying molecular mechanisms remain un...

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of gynecologic cancer deaths and the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths among American women. Advances in surgery and treatment modalities have slightly improved five-year survival rates, but the prognosis for most women continues to be poor. Rectovaginal examination, ultrasound, and the CA-125 blood test are three modalities currently used to screen for ov...

BACKGROUND There is a growing body of evidence that testicular function has decreased rapidly over the last 50 years. However, much less is known about corresponding trends in ovarian function. Herein, we examine the temporal changes in ovarian function in a large sample of infertile patients from the Czech Republic over a period of 14 years. METHODS In a retrospective study, we analysed a la...