By Marilyn Kennedy Melia
The Tribune

Lots of couples want a baby — someday.

Then, when someday finally comes, they want to conceive right now.

While some might term such impatience an impudent attempt to control fate, it does have a practical side: It’s important to know if you will have trouble getting pregnant as soon as possible. That’s because the more time you have during your fertile years to remedy the problem, the better
The standard advice is that couples who spend 12 months unsuccessfully trying to conceive should see a doctor for fertility screenings; after age 30 they may want to seek help after six months, said Dr. Arthur Haney, a reproductive endocrinologist and chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Now an at-home test called Fertell aims to provide an early alert to either male or female fertility problems and thereby shorten the wait for professional help.

Fertell joins ovulation predictors and at least one sperm-count home test already on store shelves, noted Brad Imler, president of the American Pregnancy Association in Irving, Texas.

Too good to be true?

Not an ovulation predictor, the Fertell test must be used by women on the third day of their cycle.

With the first morning urine, the test indicates whether there is a favorable “ovarian reserve,” meaning they have not yet become menopausal and lost all their eggs. The test results are triggered by levels of FSH, or follicle-stimulating hormone.

For men, the Fertell test measures both sperm count and motility. “Our test looks at not only whether you have enough sperm but enough to swim to the egg,” explained Robert Thompson, president of Genosis Inc., the Needham, Mass., company that makes Fertell.

At-home tests and pregnancy have gone hand in hand for decades, with millions disappointed or delighted with the color of the stick from a home pregnancy test.

“An at-home test for fertility? It sounds too good to be true.” That was the reaction of Anne Dolin, 35, of Lisle upon hearing about Fertell. She endured agonizing rounds of fertility testing and treatments and now is a mother of two.

Dolin said she would have loved a simple alert to her pending troubles when she first started trying to conceive at age 30. But her issues, which included endometriosis, wouldn’t have been uncovered by the Fertell test.

Fertility indicators

Indeed, while Fertell provides a glimpse at a woman’s “ovarian reserve” and a man’s sperm count and motility, it’s only a current reading of certain fertility indicators. “There’s no guarantee you can get pregnant, no matter what the test says,” Thompson said.

Still, the test may prove valuable in specific instances.

A 32-year-old couple, for instance, whose efforts to conceive are unsuccessful after four months, might take the Fertell test and find an abnormal result. They would be well served to see a physician immediately.

Though Thompson said Fertell has an accuracy rate exceeding 95 percent for men and women, Haney added that a physician is going to run screening tests that offer much more nuanced results, such as finding whether white blood cells in semen indicate infection.

The $100 Fertell test could be the first in a long and expensive process of uncovering and treating fertility issues.

Genosis, which sells the test online and in CVS pharmacies, is targeting a huge and growing market. At the cafemom.com Web site, which is an online community serving 700,000 women, most already mothers, fertility is one of the most consistently popular topics among the thirtysomething members posting online.

Testing for men

If the test becomes popular, couples anxious about their results will keep reproductive specialists busy, Haney predicted. “And physicians will do the tests all over again, to measure in a system they have more confidence in. I would do an FHS [level] in a blood test, for instance, to tell me if it [the Fertell results] are real.”

Still, Haney does endorse the “at-home” aspect of testing for men. “We usually ask women to bring in the sample from her partner. There can be a strong anxiety factor influencing [male] results,” he explained, “and anxiety tends to lessen when the man doesn’t have to come in.”

The big danger of do-it-yourself testing, though, is misinterpreting the results. A 30-year-old Chicago woman, for instance, who wants to delay childbearing and asked that her name not be used, said that when she and her husband obtained normal results, they felt comfortable delaying childbearing.

“But then when I talked with my friends who had already gone through fertility treatments, I found out the test doesn’t work that way; that getting a good result now doesn’t mean we’ll have one later.”

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