Florence Pugh reveals she froze her eggs after being diagnosed with PCOS and endometriosis

[hewontgo]

Florence Pugh reveals she froze her eggs after being diagnosed with PCOS and endometriosis last year https://t.co/ZTLO3SM8sO pic.twitter.com/fBYeFh5k1q
- Page Six (@PageSix) November 19, 2024

During an episode of the 'She MD' podcast, Pugh, 28, revealed she froze her eggs after learning both conditions could lead to infertility.

“I just had this

Comments

[skyler_white_yo]

ELI5, how does freezing eggs help with PCOS/endo?

The medical community needs to do more for women’s health and research. It should not be acceptable to be told that debilitating cramps are normal. But given the world we’ll be entering, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

[timeywimeystuff]

I'll let someone correct me if I'm wrong but, largely, both can interfere with ovulation and endo can cause damage to your ovaries and prevent fertilization. Having your eggs out and frozen when they're healthier gives you better chances for IVF later on.

I have PCOS and while I actually had an abundance of eggs, my body just did not want to ovulate. I was very fortunate that a couple rounds of medication to force me to ovulate worked, IVF would have been the next step which we absolutely could not have been able to afford.

[steffi_333]

PCOS and endo can affect fertility. They can cause irregular periods which affect ovulation, or scar tissue which can trap eggs and sperm (and potentially increase risk of ectopic pregnancy).

Endo treatment can also damage fertility. In drastic cases it can involve surgery (potentially including hysterectomy), but it can also involve inducing menopause through medicines.

Freezing eggs means that if you ever get endo/pcos under control you can go for IVF, or you could explore surrogacy.

[evilgerbil]

They don't. Freezing eggs is about egg quality, which declines with age. Neither are affected by PCOS or endometriosis.

This is definitely beyond the explanation of a 5-year-old, but most people do not know what declining egg quality means. From what I have read, it is primarily a breakdown of the meiotic spindle apparatus. So when The primary oocyte, which is what is hanging around in the ovaries since before birth, undergoes meiosis to become the secondary oocyte, which is what gets fertilized, the chromosomes may not separate correctly. There may therefore be chromosomal abnormalities in the egg that can lead to an inability to be fertilized, or an embryo that does not develop properly.

[insomniachobs]

For any woman considering freezing her eggs, earlier is better in terms of quality. But there are a couple of problems with endo that make early retrieval even more pressing:

1) When it spreads to the ovary, which is common, it can really fuck with ovulation and natural conception. (PCOS can do the same)

2) Egg retrievals from endo patients tend to result in fewer usable eggs at the same time as it typically taking more IVF cycles to achieve a successful pregnancy compared to patients of the same age without it. For your best chance, you want to go as early as possible