Status: Closed
Chief Investigator: Dr Kate Bramham
Research Fellow in charge: Dr Mahua Bhaduri
Funding: The study is funded by the Fetal Medicine Foundation and is being sponsored by King’s College Hospital.
The aim of the study is to better understand how kidney disease affects fertility and what can be done to help women who want to become pregnant.
Women with chronic illnesses tend to have reduced fertility – but the reason for this fact is poorly understood. King’s Fertility’s association with King’s College Hospital means that we receive a lot of complicated referrals. In order to optimise these patients’ outcomes, we need to work out the causes of infertility. This is one of the first studies to be undertaken that addresses this issue.
Kidney disease affects 3% of women of childbearing age. However, pregnancy rates in patients with kidney disease are very low at 1 – 10% of the general population. We do not fully understand why kidney disease reduces fertility and how it affects female reproductive hormones. By measuring these hormones and looking at ovarian function in women with kidney disease we gather information to try and understand this further.
We hope that the knowledge we get from this study will help improve the future care for women with kidney disease who have fertility problems or wish to have children.