A Hormone Therapy Offers Hope to Infertile Couples
The hormone kisspeptin-1 was first discovered in 1999 by doctors in Pennsylvania, Hershey. Hershey has a chocolate company which has been making a chocolate treat called 'Hershey Kisses' since 1907, and it is thought that the doctors who discovered the hormone, named it after the town's famous chocolate delicacy.
Animals and humans who don't produce kisspeptin, fail to enter puberty. There is some speculation among the scientific community that a lack of kisspeptin may also cause a woman's periods to stop, although as yet there is no concrete evidence for this.
The Study
A group of ten infertile women were split into two groups. Five were injected with kisspeptin-1 and the other five were injected with a saline solution. Then they had blood samples taken to measure the levels of luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), two hormones needed for ovulation and necessary for reproduction to take place.
Those women who had the kisspeptin-1 injections had a 48% increase in LH and a 16% increase in FSH, compared with the women who were just given saline.
A larger study would be needed to confirm the results.
Less Risky Than IVF?
Treatment with kisspeptin-1 hormone injections is already being coined as less risky than IVF. You don't need to inject yourself with drugs that could make you hyper-stimulate. In 1% of cases, a woman will produce so many eggs due to the stimulating drugs, that she will be hospitalized and at risk of organ failure. You don't need to inject yourself with what are essentially chemotherapy drugs in order to shut down your ovulation, there is no need to be put to sleep for egg retrieval or given any of the powerful sedatives if you choose to stay awake.
No injection or medical treatment is ever 100% risk free, but having hormone injections prior to getting pregnant, seems to be less complicated and risky than an often long and drawn out IVF process.
A Doorway to Treatments for Other Disorders?
Even more recently, researchers at Monash University in Malaysia have discovered the kisspeptin-2 hormone (KISS-2), named after the first kisspeptin because the two are almost identical. They are hoping that they will be able to use this hormone to treat a number of reproductive diseases and even mood and depression problems, if they are caused by hormonal imbalance.
Dr. Ishwar Parhar, head of the Brain Research Institute at Monash University, where KISS-2 was discovered, said
"This is the first report on the discovery of Kiss-2, which could lead towards the development of therapeutic medicines for reproduction-related diseases, including mood disorders and onset of puberty. Kisspeptin is needed for the G-protein coupled receptor 54 (GPR54) to function. Mutation of the gene leads to infertility."
The next generation of adults may not have to undergo the same complexities currently experienced by infertile couples, if they too are shown to have fertility problems.
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