Sesh Kamal Sunkara¹,*, Arri Coomarasamy², Wiebke Arlt²,and Siladitya Bhattacharya³

• ¹Assisted Conception Unit, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust, King’s College London, 11th Floor, Tower Wing, St Thomas’ Street,London SE1 9RT, UK
• ²School of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham,Birmingham, UK
• ³Division of Applied Health Sciences, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

Abstract: Poor ovarian response is reported in 9–24% of IVF cycles. Several interventions have been proposed to improve theoutcome, although evidence to support these has been scant. There has been interest in the use of adjuvant androgens in this contextand a recent worldwide survey showed that nearly a quarter of IVF clinicians used dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) in poor responders.We examine the rationale for the use of adjuvant androgens and suggest that the current clinical uncertainty should be addressed by a ran-domized controlled trial of DHEA in poor responders.

Key words: poor ovarian response / androgens / IVF treatment

Download