Postponing menopause
St. Petersburg doctors have figured out how to postpone old age. The method only works on women
Nadezhda Krylova, "Doctor Peter"
Active aging of the body, which begins with the onset of menopause, can be postponed. Professor of SPbSPMU has patented in Russia, the USA and China a method of prolonging youth. According to him, she can "throw off" a dozen years.
Menopause is not only associated with the end of a woman's reproductive function. When the ovaries "fall asleep", a serious hormone deficiency is formed, which triggers a cascade of metabolic disorders in the body. Menopause is associated with an increased risk of developing cardiovascular and neurological diseases, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, not to mention a decrease in a woman's quality of life. Today, doctors, in order to slow down the arrival of menopause, prescribe hormone replacement therapy, but its possibilities are very limited.
– Menopausal hormone therapy (MGT) is based on replenishing the deficiency of one hormone – estradiol or its metabolites. But today it is known that the ovaries secrete more than 160 biologically active substances. Of these, on an industrial scale, as drugs we can synthesize only 3 – progesterone, estradiol and testosterone. Therefore, hormone therapy is not able to make up for the deficiency of all biologically active substances produced by the ovaries, – said the head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of St. Petersburg State Medical University, Professor Nikolay Rukhlyada.
The essence of the new development of the specialist of the Pediatric University is in autotransplantation of ovarian tissue. First, a small fragment of tissue is taken from a woman – this is done laparoscopically at the reproductive age, then it is divided into several parts and frozen. When a woman begins to show signs of approaching menopause, doctors can perform autotransplantation – to return her own tissue to the patient's body. Inside, it forms a "microhelesis" that will produce all sex hormones, not just those included in hormone replacement therapy. According to Nikolai Rukhlyada, in this way it is possible to postpone menopause, and with it aging for about ten years.
Similar tactics are already being used in oncofertility programs – to preserve reproductive function in women suffering from oncological diseases. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy can lead to infertility, and cryopreservation of eggs, embryos and ovarian tissues before treatment can then, with the onset of remission, give such women the joy of motherhood. The Pediatric University has been developing cryopreservation technologies and oncofertility programs for more than 4 years.
– The experience gained by the clinics where the IVF procedure is carried out – including the clinic of our university – concerns the freezing of very small volumes of tissue: embryos, spermatozoa, eggs. But to freeze a thick layer of fabric so that later it would be possible to return this fabric, and for it to take root again is a completely different task. Our department has been doing this for 4 years, and for more than 10 years we have been cooperating with various clinics of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). We have received several patents related to cryopreservation technologies for large volumes of ovarian tissue. We have developed a container that allows freezing and storing this fabric in a special gas environment with high pressure, minimizing cold damage. We have sent the results of our work to the competition of the Russian government prize in science and technology 2020 and hope for its implementation," the obstetrician–gynecologist explained.
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