As a woman ages, her supply of eggs that could be fertilized depletes. Fewer and fewer eggs are released by the ovaries. Once a woman has reached menopause, it is likely that her ovarian reserve is completely empty. Her ovarian reserve is very closely related to her ability to conceive. In fact, age is considered the most significant of all of the factors used to determine whether or not a woman will be able to become pregnant. Fortunately, there are ways that a woman’s ovarian reserve can be tested.

Generally speaking, you can only test your ovarian reserve in an indirect way. There is no way for a health care provider to look at your ovaries directly and determine whether your ovarian reserve is low. However, these indirect ways of testing your ovarian reserve can be quite reliable. One of the ways to test your ovarian reserve is with a blood test. Your health care provider will look for the presence of a variety of hormones, including Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), Luteinizing Hormone (LH), estradiol, and inhibin-B. A health care provider will test for only one or maybe two of these hormones, depending on the health care provider’s personal preference and area of experience.

Another common way to test your ovarian reserve is with the clomiphene citrate challenge test. This test measures the hormone FSH, but then measures FSH levels again several days later after the woman takes the clomiphene citrate (also called Clomid or Serophene). This sort of test will also give the health care provider information about the woman’s ovarian reserve.

There are also some newer ways of testing ovarian reserve. In one of these newer tests, the ovaries will generally be stimulated for the purpose of producing more than one egg that could be fertilized per 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 sort of test will also provide the health care provider with information about whether the woman might respond to fertility mediations in a positive way.

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