The technology, developed by researchers at Imperial College London and The University of Hong Kong, can be used to measure hormones that affect fertility, sexual development and menstruation more quickly and cheaply than current methods.
The technology, developed by researchers at Imperial College London and The University of Hong Kong, can be used to measure hormones that affect fertility, sexual development and menstruation more quickly and cheaply than current methods.
The work, published in Nature Communications, took place in the Chemistry Department at Imperial College London and the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. It was tested in patients at Hammersmith Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
A third of women in England suffer from severe reproductive health problems such as infertility and early menopause. Doctors usually diagnose these conditions by carrying out a blood test to measure the amount of luteinizing hormone (LH) in the sample. Current blood tests cannot easily measure the rise and fall of LH levels which is vital for normal fertility - so-called LH pulse patterns that are linked to reproductive disorders. It is not currently feasible to measure LH pulse patterns in a clinical setting as doctors need to take a blood sample from patients every 10 minutes for at least eight hours. In addition, the analysis of these samples is time consuming as the blood needs to be sent to a laboratory and testing is expensive.
Read more at Imperial College London
