Background: Diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) is a primary infertility disorder characterized by a reduction in the number and/or quality of oocytes, usually accompanied by high follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) levels and regular menses. DOR aetiology factors are different, such as genetic factors, ageing, autoimmune disorders, adrenal gland impairment factors and iatrogenic causes, e.g. chemo...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Mutations in bone morphogenic protein 15 (BMP15) and growth/differentiation factor 9 (GDF9) lead to altered fertility in animal models. In the human, a heterozygous point mutation of BMP15 has been associated with premature ovarian failure (POF). SUBJECT AND METHODS We have directly sequenced both genes in a cohort of 203 POF patients presenting with primary or second...

BACKGROUND The WNT4 gene plays an important role in female sex determination and differentiation. It also contributes to maintaining of the ovaries and the survival of follicles. METHODS We sequenced the coding region and splice sites of WNT4 in 145 Han Chinese women with premature ovarian failure (POF) and 200 healthy controls. RESULTS Only one novel variation, in Exon 2 (195C > T), was de...

We introduce a novel technique, POF-Darts, to estimate the Probability Of Failure based on random disk-packing in the uncertain parameter space. POF-Darts uses hyperplane sampling to explore the unexplored part of the uncertain space. We use the function evaluation at a sample point to determine whether it belongs to failure or non-failure regions, and surround it with a protection sphere regio...

This meta-analysis was designed to assess the overall performance of GnRHa in preserving the ovarian function in young women undergoing chemotherapy. Electronic literature databases including Pubmed, MEDLINE, Cochrane library, Embase, CNKI and Wanfang were searched for articles published till November, 2013. The articles written in both Chinese and English were considered. Only randomized contr...

Age at natural menopause (ANM), a highly heritable phenotype, has been identified to be closely associated with major hormone-related diseases, including breast cancer and gynecological cancers. We previously identified an important role for the transforming growth factor, β receptor II (TGFBR2) gene polymorphisms in breast cancer susceptibility among Asian women. Considering the important role...

We develop a single-end-access strain/temperature sensor configuration based on multimodal interference in a polymer optical fiber (POF) with an extremely high sensitivity. The light Fresnel-reflected at the distal open end of the POF is exploited. We obtain high strain and temperature sensitivities of –122.2 pm/με and 10.1 nm/°C, respectively, which are shown to be comparable to those in two-e...

1 of 2 DESCRIPTION Peripheral ossifying fi broma (POF) exclusively found on the gingiva and may be presented with randomly distributed calcifi cations, immature bone, separation of teeth and bone resorption. 1 Its prevalence in children is 1.9% with a mean age of 14 years and a higher predilection in females and maxillary incisor-cuspid region. 2 A 16-year-old boy reported with a soft tissue ma...

Oocyte donation can satisfy the desire to have children in women with premature ovarian failure (POF) but little progress has been made to improve reproduction using the patients' own gametes. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of alternative treatments to oocyte donation in patients with POF. A systematic search of MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane databases from January 1988 to ...

This paper presents a polymer optical fiber (POF)-based temperature sensor. The operation principle of the sensor is the variation in the POF mechanical properties with the temperature variation. Such mechanical property variation leads to a variation in the POF output power when a constant stress is applied to the fiber due to the stress-optical effect. The fiber mechanical properties are char...