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Concept
Female infertility
Summary
Female infertility refers to infertility in women. It affects an estimated 48 million women, with the highest prevalence of infertility affecting women in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa/Middle East, and Central/Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Infertility is caused by many sources, including nutrition, diseases, and other malformations of the uterus. Infertility affects women from around the world, and the cultural and social stigma surrounding it varies.
Causes or factors of female infertility can basically be classified regarding whether they are acquired or genetic, or strictly by location.
Although factors of female infertility can be classified as either acquired or genetic, female infertility is usually more or less a combination of nature and nurture. Also, the presence of any single risk factor of female infertility (such as smoking, mentioned further below) does not necessarily cause infertility, and even if a woman is definitely infertile, the infertility cannot definitely be blamed on any single risk factor even if the risk factor is (or has been) present.
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), age, smoking, sexually transmitted infections, and being overweight or underweight can all affect fertility.
In broad sense, acquired factors practically include any factor that is not based on a genetic mutation, including any intrauterine exposure to toxins during fetal development, which may present as infertility many years later as an adult.
Age and female fertility
A woman's fertility is affected by her age. The average age of a girl's first period (menarche) is 12–13 (12.5 years in the United States, 12.72 in Canada, 12.9 in the UK), but, in postmenarchal girls, about 80% of the cycles are anovulatory in the first year after menarche, 50% in the third and 10% in the sixth year. A woman's fertility peaks in the early and mid 20s, after which it starts to decline, with this decline being accelerated after age 35.
Official source
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