Dehydroepiandrosterone

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a product of adrenal and ovarian steroidogenesis, is a mild androgen, which is primarily converted to testosterone but to a lesser degree also to estrogen. In 2000, Casson et al. were first to suggest that DHEA may beneficially affect ovarian function in women with diminished ovarian reserve (DOR), when reporting improving oocyte yields with IVF after relative short-term DHEA supplementation [1]. Their work, however, was not followed up until, approximately five years later, when our group became interested in DHEA, and in a series of studies determined that DHEA supplementation, indeed, significantly improves ovarian performance in women with DOR [2]. We demonstrated that DHEA not only improves oocyte yields but also embryo numbers, oocyte quality and, therefore, ultimately pregnancy chances with IVF, spontaneous pregnancy rates, cumulative pregnancy chances, and time to conception with infertility treatments [2]. The effectiveness of DHEA was recently also confirmed by a first small, prospectively randomized study [3].