Researchers believe that a woman will only have a certain number of viable eggs over her lifetime. This is referred to as her ovarian reserve. As she gets older, her ovarian reserve gets depleted. When a woman reaches menopause, her ovarian reserve is thought to be gone entirely. Ovarian reserve, then, very much affects a woman’s chances at conception. Unfortunately, there is no way for a woman to increase her ovarian reserve. However, there are ways that a woman’s ovarian reserve can be measured, which is useful in that measuring ovarian reserve can help to identify the possible causes of infertility.

Ovarian reserve cannot be measured directly, however. There isn’t a way for health care providers to peek inside of the ovaries and count individual eggs. Instead, a health care provider will typically use measurements of any numbers of hormones, such as inhibin-B, estradiol, FSH, or LH to try to calculate a woman’s ovarian reserve. The hormone or hormones that a given health care provider can vary, depending on the specific health care provider.

A clomiphene citrate challenge test is another way to measure a woman’s ovarian reserve. In this test, a woman first takes the fertility clomiphene citrate (also knonw as Clomid). Several days after she takes the clomiphene citrate, the health care provider will measure her levels of FSH. Whether or not her body seems to have responded to the clomiphene citrate is a good indication of whether or not a woman’s ovarian reserve has decreased to the point that it is affecting her fertility.

There is one test that can be used to count eggs, although it doesn’t count the actual eggs inside of the ovaries. Instead, the ovaries are stimulated so that they will produce more than one egg that could be fertilized in a cycle. The health care provider will then measure what are known as the antral follicles, which are small follicles that are available to be stimulated. This may help know whether a woman will respond positively to fertility medications, and whether or not her ovarian reserve is low.

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