Markers of vitality in ovaries of transmen after long-term androgen treatment: a prospective cohort study
- PDF / 1,133,854 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 73 Downloads / 200 Views
Molecular Medicine
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Markers of vitality in ovaries of transmen after long-term androgen treatment: a prospective cohort study Julian Marschalek1, Detlef Pietrowski1, Sabine Dekan2, Marie-Louise Marschalek1, Maximilian Brandstetter1 and Johannes Ott1*
Abstract Background: Gender-affirming hormone therapy has been hypothesized to reduce the patient’s reproductive potential in transmen, although the exact long-term effects on future fertility are unknown. Methods: In this prospective cohort study we aimed to evaluate ovaries of 20 transmen by using hormone serum levels, histomorphological analysis and fluorescence activated cells sorting (FACS) analysis – in order to assess the amount of vital cells. Results: The median total number of follicles per field of view was 39 (IQR 12–122). Of all follicles (n = 1661), the vast majority was primordial (n = 1505, 90.6%), followed by primary (n = 76, 4.6%), abnormal (n = 63, 3.8%) and secondary follicles (n = 17, 1.0%). FACS analysis was available for 13 samples (65.0%) and the median frequency of vital cells was 87.5% (IQR, 77.7–95.4%). Both a higher age (p = 0.032) and a lower BMI (p = 0.003) were significantly associated with a higher frequency of vital cells. Conclusion: The majority of ovarian cells after long-term androgen treatment were vital in FACS analysis and histomorphological evaluation revealed a normal cortical follicle distribution. These results are currently exploratory, but might be promising for issues on fertility preservation. Trial registration: The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Medical University of Vienna (EK 2240/ 2016) and was retrospectively registered in the Current Controlled Trials Register (registration number NCT0364 9087, date of registration: 28.08.2018). Keywords: Transgender, Transmen, Fertility, Histomorphology, Fluorescence activated cells sorting (FACS)
Background Gender dysphoria is generally considered a rare condition with a prevalence of 2.6/100,000 for what was has formerly been called “female-to-male” transsexualism (Arcelus et al. 2015). The quality of life of affected patients, namely transmen and transwomen, is substantially reduced (Newfield et al. 2006; Valashany and Janghorbani 2018). Genderaffirming hormone therapy exerts highly positive * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Clinical Division of Gynecologic Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine, Medical University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 23, 1090 Vienna, Austria Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
psychological effects (Arcelus et al. 2015). In addition, surgical gender transition often is a crucial step for the patient and leads to further improvements of quality-of-life outcomes (Morrison et al. 2017). However, gender-affirming hormone therapy has been claimed to reduce the patient’s reproductive potential in transmen, although the exact longterm effects on future fertility are unknown (Cheng et al. 2019). In histologic studies on o
Data Loading...
