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An unassuming brown bovine from the south of Brazil has made history as the first transgenic cow capable of producing human insulin in her milk. The advancement, led by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Universidade de São Paulo, could herald a new era in insulin production, one day eliminating drug scarcity and high costs for people living with diabetes.
“Mother Nature designed the mammary gland as a factory to make protein really, really efficiently. We can take advantage of that system to produce a protein that can help hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” said Matt Wheeler, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I. He is also affiliated with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, The Grainger College of Engineering, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Beckman Institute, and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
Wheeler is lead author on a new Biotechnology Journal study describing the development of the insulin-producing cow, a proof-of-concept achievement that could be scaled up after additional testing and FDA approval.
Wheeler’s colleagues in Brazil inserted a segment of human DNA coding for proinsulin — the protein precursor of the active form of insulin — into cell nuclei of 10 cow embryos. These were implanted in the uteruses of normal cows in Brazil, and one transgenic calf was born. Thanks to updated genetic engineering technology, the human DNA was targeted for expression — the process whereby gene sequences are read and translated into protein products — in mammary tissue only.
“In the old days, we used to just slam DNA in and hope it got expressed where you wanted it to,” Wheeler said. “We can be much more strategic and targeted these days. Using a DNA construct specific to mammary tissue means there’s no human insulin circulating in the cow’s blood or other tissues. It also takes advantage of the mammary gland’s capabilities for producing large quantities of protein.”
When the cow reached maturity, the team unsuccessfully attempted to impregnate her using standard artificial insemination techniques. Instead, they stimulated her first lactation using hormones. The lactation yielded milk, but a smaller quantity than would occur after a successful pregnancy. Still, human proinsulin and, surprisingly, insulin were detectable in the milk.
“Our goal was to make proinsulin, purify it out to insulin, and go from there. But the cow basically processed it herself. She makes about three to one biologically active insulin to proinsulin,” Wheeler said. “The mammary gland is a magical thing.”
The insulin and proinsulin, which would need to be extracted and purified for use, were expressed at a few grams per liter in the milk. But because the lactation was induced hormonally and the milk volume was smaller than expected, the team can’t say exactly how much insulin would be made in a typical lactation.

Conservatively, Wheeler says if a cow could make 1 gram of insulin per liter and a typical Holstein makes 40 to 50 liters per day, that’s a lot of insulin. Especially since the typical unit of insulin equals 0.0347 milligrams.
“That means each gram is equivalent to 28,818 units of insulin,” Wheeler said. “And that’s just one liter; Holsteins can produce 50 liters per day. You can do the math.”
The team plans to re-clone the cow, and is optimistic they’ll achieve greater success with pregnancy and full lactation cycles in the next generation. Eventually, they hope to create transgenic bulls to mate with the females, creating transgenic offspring that can be used to establish a purpose-built herd. Wheeler says even a small herd could quickly outcompete existing methods — transgenic yeast and bacteria — for producing insulin, and could do so without having to create highly technical facilities or infrastructure.
“With regard to mass-producing insulin in milk, you’d need specialized, high-health-status facilities for the cattle, but it’s nothing too out of the ordinary for our well-established dairy industry,” Wheeler said. “We know what we’re doing with cows.”
An efficient system to collect and purify insulin products would be needed, as well as FDA approval, before transgenic cows could supply insulin for the world’s diabetics. But Wheeler is confident that day is coming.
“I could see a future where a 100-head herd, equivalent to a small Illinois or Wisconsin dairy, could produce all the insulin needed for the country,” he said. “And a larger herd? You could make the whole world’s supply in a year.

Teachers might be more motivated to help students engage with their emotions and build their resilience when this work is part of lessons, rather than as an add-on intervention, a new study has found.
Using socioemotional learning to support children to develop communication skills, handle stress and accept failure works best as part of everyday teaching — rather than when it is not organically linked to the school life and curriculum, reseachers have said.
The study, by Eleni Dimitrellou, George Koutsouris and Alison Pearson from the University of Exeter’s School of Education, is published in the journal Pastoral Care in Education.
Dr Dimitrellou said: “There is a need to explicitly introduce socioemotional oriented teaching in secondary education to ensure young adolescents enjoy positive short-term and long-term outcomes linked with positive attitudes toward self and others, positive behaviour, wellbeing and academic success.”
Dr Koutsouris said: “Teachers felt a curriculum based around social and emotional learning had a place not only in primary where some think it might be more suited but in secondary schools as well. These are skills learned in a developmental continuum where students need to cultivate some basic skills first before being in the position to develop more complex ones.
“Teenagers are more likely to experience emotional challenges, and even if they are equipped with effective strategies to regulate their emotions in primary education they should be able to access this form of support in secondary school.”
Academics worked in partnership with one mainstream secondary school in the South West of England for two months during the summer term in 2022. Two teacher trainees and one qualified PE teacher designed, evaluated, and planned a sequence of four lessons focusing on integrating socioemotional-oriented teaching in PE using a lesson study approach, originating in Japan.
As part of the study, PE teachers worked together with students in a range of activities. In one case the PE teachers taught students team building by asking them to work together in pairs to climb a wall while one of them was blindfolded. At the start of the activity, students had to discuss and agree on a strategy to meet this target. In the end, they had to reflect on their abilities and discuss what went well and wrong and how things could have been done differently.
Two distinct views among participating teachers emerged. One one hand, there was a view that the core structure and content of the subject should remain unchanged. Experienced teachers involved in this discussion questioned the introduction of socioemotional oriented teaching in PE lessons, expressing concerns that it might prevent children from learning physical development skills.
However, teacher trainees seemed more open to recognising the benefits that explicitly teaching social and emotional skills might bring to students. There was the belief that students who struggle, especially emotionally and socially, might reap more benefits from such an approach. This might reflect how emotions and mental health are more openly discussed by younger generations.

Published52 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Miriam BarkerBBC NewsBoris Johnson was like an “absent” football manager during Covid, an inquiry has heard. First Minister Mark Drakeford criticised the former prime minister’s leadership during the pandemic. He also said Johnson made comments “designed to minimise the seriousness” of Covid at the beginning. Mr Drakeford’s comments came on the penultimate day of the UK inquiry’s Welsh module in Cardiff as he gave a whole day of evidence.As it happened: International travel lists ‘chaotic and shambolic’ – DrakefordInternational travel lists ‘chaotic and shambolic’ – Drakeford’Wales felt like second-class citizens in pandemic’In a written statement to the inquiry, Mr Drakeford described Michael Gove, who was minister for the Cabinet Office during the early part of the pandemic as “a centre forward without a team behind him, and where the manager was largely absent”.At the inquiry, Mr Drakeford said: “The absent manager was the prime minister because he was never in these meetings or at the table, and while Mr Gove was a senior minister… he has influence rather than the determinative impact which a message from the prime minister would have.” Image source, PA MediaHe added he would have liked to have seen Johnson chairing Cobra meetings sooner in the pandemic.He said it would not necessarily change actions taken, but would have “sent a stronger signal about the seriousness with which the gathering storm was being taken”. But it was put to Drakeford that his own absences from the first three Cobra meetings indicated a similar lack of serious approach being taken in WalesHe argued that at that stage it was a “health dominated” matter, requiring health advisors and decision-makers. He also said Johnson “deliberately” made it unclear lockdown rules only applied to England.He told the inquiry the heads of the devolved nations had told the then-prime minister he needed to be clear in a press conference that changes to rules in the pandemic only applied to England.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.”[We said] he must make clear that what he is about to say does not apply to Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland, and he gives assurance in the Cobra meeting that he will do his very best to make sure that he does that.”He then heads to the cameras, and provides a script which the only time he refers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is when he says early in the press conference ‘as the prime minister of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland’.”It is a very clear indication to people that what he’s about to say applied to the whole of the United Kingdom, and he never once says that is not the case.”Drakeford described this as a “bleak moment” and “deliberate”.The first minister also referenced a message the then-UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, had sent to Michael Gove which incorrectly stated public health was not devolved.He added this showed a “lack of clarity” over the legislative basis for powers that would be needed to deal with the pandemic.Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry”My belief right up until 20 March [three days before the first lockdown], is that the essential decisions would remain in the hands of the UK government and that devolved governments would be implementers of those decisions,” he said. He added it was “pretty alarming” this was still being resolved on 20 March. Mr Drakeford told the inquiry mass gatherings were allowed during the early stages of the pandemic because Dominic Cummings refused to stop them.He said large events, such as the Cheltenham Festival, were allowed to run at the start of the pandemic despite him arguing “mass gatherings should not go ahead” because Boris Johnson’s former advisor dismissed the idea. He added he made the argument in a Cobra meeting on 12 March, weeks before the first lockdown.”In this discussion, the prime minister did go around the room, he took views from anybody who wanted to contribute and in that discussion I was arguing for a four-nation agreement that mass gatherings would not go ahead.”The reason I have such a vivid memory of it is that having gone around the table the prime minister summed up against that course of action by saying: ‘Dom says no’. That was his final contribution.”I did not know who Dom was at this point,” Mr Drakeford added.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.He described the introduction of international travel lists in the summer of 2021 as “chaotic and shambolic” because of the “pace at which changes are made”. Mr Drakeford told the inquiry he asked for decisions on travel be taken on a UK-wide basis and not without the agreement of devolved administrations. “In this area, the Welsh government only had theoretical powers of agency because most people who travel abroad from Wales don’t do so from Wales and back to Wales.”So, in effect, we simply had to do whatever the UK government decided.”Mr Drakeford also told the inquiry he regretted everything that had led to loss of life in care homes during Covid.He said there were not enough Covid tests to do “all we’d like to have done with them”. “Of course, there are instances where coronavirus is seeded into care homes by people being discharged from hospital, but the primary reason why coronavirus ends up in a care home is because of the necessary ingress into care homes of people who are there to care for people there. “As coronavirus rises in the community, the risk that it will be carried into a care home in that way increases.”He dismissed calls for a UK-wide response in the event of a future pandemic.”I don’t think the evidence suggests to me that the decisions made in London would have been better decisions as far as Wales is concerned,” he said.”I definitely don’t agree that better decisions would have been made from Whitehall than in Wales.”He added he would have welcomed a “strengthened ability to co-ordinate” between the four nations. The Welsh module of the UK Covid Inquiry concludes on Thursday.More on this story’Wales felt like second-class citizens in pandemic’Published23 hours agoMissing messages ‘a real embarrassment’ – GethingPublished2 days agoWelsh ministers didn’t know Covid rules – inquiryPublished6 days agoHealth expert astonished at lack of Covid urgencyPublished7 days agoCovid not top priority in early 2020, inquiry toldPublished5 March

Published16 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, GoFundMeBy Ido VockBBC NewsThe polio survivor known as “the man in the iron lung” has died at the age of 78.Paul Alexander contracted polio in 1952 when he was six, leaving him paralysed from the neck down. The disease left him unable to breathe independently, leading doctors to place him in the metal cylinder, where he would spend the rest of his life.He would go on to earn a law degree – and practise law – as well as publish a memoir. “Paul Alexander, ‘The Man in the Iron Lung’, passed away yesterday,” a post on a fundraising website said. “In this time Paul went to college, became a lawyer, and a published author. “Paul was an incredible role model.”In 1952, when he became ill, doctors in his hometown of Dallas operated on him, saving his life. But polio meant his body was no longer able to breathe on his own. The answer was to place him in a so-called iron lung – a metal cylinder enclosing his body up to his neck. The lung, which he called his “old iron horse”, allowed him to breathe. Bellows sucked air out of the cylinder, forcing his lungs to expand and take in air. When the air was let back in, the same process in reverse made his lungs deflate. After years, Alexander eventually learned to breathe by himself so that he was able to leave the lung for short periods of time. Like most polio survivors placed in iron lungs, he was not expected to survive long. But he lived for decades, long after the invention of the polio vaccine in the 1950s all but eradicated the disease in the Western world. He graduated from high school, then attended the Southern Methodist University. In 1984, he gained a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Admitted to the bar two years later, he practiced as a lawyer for decades. “I knew if I was going to do anything with my life, it was going to have to be a mental thing,” he told the Guardian in 2020.That year, he published a memoir which reportedly took him eight years to write using a plastic stick to type on a keyboard and dictating to a friend. Advances in medicine made iron lungs obsolete by the 1960s, replaced by ventilators. But Alexander kept living in the cylinder because, he said, he was used to it. He was recognised by Guinness World Records as the person who lived the longest in an iron lung.More on this storySuper-engineered vaccines created to help end polioPublished14 June 2023What is polio and how can you protect yourself?Published10 August 2022

Published5 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Sarah WalkerBBC SouthBBC sports broadcaster Jennie Gow has said her recovery from a stroke was helped by a nurse who told her to “get angry” if she wanted to speak again.The Radio Five Live F1 commentator has spent months relearning how to talk and walk after the stroke in 2022.The 46-year-old told BBC Radio Berkshire her recovery was down to the “fortune and luck” of such a quick medical response.She wants more support and research to help people who suffer strokes.The Southampton-born presenter, who grew up in Wargrave, Berkshire, was found by her husband collapsed in the bathroom in December 2022 and rushed to hospital.Image source, Getty ImagesDoctors found she had suffered a stroke caused by a blood clot that came from the carotid artery in the neck, a tear in the blood vessel due to coughing and a viral infection that she had at the time. The clot damaged the part of the brain associated with speech. Nevertheless, she said the speed of the medical response had “put me in a position to make a good recovery”.Speaking to the BBC, she said: “Having that right care and the speed of that care can make such a big difference. It really is a postcode lottery”Knowing how to get through that first phase – the quicker you can speak, the quicker the rewiring can happen. You are building new pathways.”It’s fascinating but so much more needs to be done to learn about stroke. It’s not spoken about enough but it’s a problem for so many families.”I’ve been lucky to meet other stroke survivors who are much younger than me, having to rebuild their lives with what is known as an older person’s disease – that’s not accurate. “You have to go about rebuilding your life when there isn’t really the support structure there.”She said her own recovery was helped by a nurse who advised her to “get angry” if she wanted to talk again.”Somehow I just found that anger and drive to speak,” she said. “If it hadn’t have been for her, I honestly don’t think I’d been speaking now.”Gow said she would like to return to her career in F1 broadcasting, but was “frustrated” at the pace of her learning to speak again.”I find l it really hard to look at someone talking into a microphone perfectly naturally and normally – sometimes I feel quite envious of that, because I know I can’t.” Gow also paid tribute to the support she has received from the world of F1, including stars like Lewis Hamilton.”There is always a lot of support in a crisis situation – they’ve been so kind, especially the heart of the motorsport industry in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.”The heartfelt connection was there with the paddock in general. I’ve grown up with motorsport as part of my life – they haven’t just dumped me to one side.”The broadcaster began her career at BBC Radio Solent before working for commercial radio stations in the south of England. She has covered F1 and other motorsport events for the BBC, ITV, Netflix and Sky.A stroke happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off, killing brain cellsThat can be due to a clot in a blood vessel, blocking the flow. Or, a vessel can burstThere are different reasons or risk factors. People may be born with or develop weaker blood vessels. Some medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, can be a factorSome lifestyle habits, such as smoking and eating an unhealthy diet, can contribute tooStroke is an emergency – rapid treatment can save lives and prevent disability. If you think someone is having a stroke, act FASTFollow BBC South on Facebook, X, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to south.newsonline@bbc.co.uk.More on this storyF1 broadcaster Gow tells of stroke recoveryPublished23 May 2023F1 broadcaster Gow gives stroke recovery updatePublished1 March 2023Broadcaster Gow ‘progressing well’ after strokePublished1 March 2023BBC broadcaster Jennie Gow suffers serious strokePublished13 January 2023

The fertility of both female and male tsetse flies is affected by a single burst of hot weather, researchers at the University of Bristol and Stellenbosch University in South Africa have found.
The effects of a single heatwave were even felt in the offspring of heat exposed parents, with more daughters being born than sons.
The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, helps explain why tsetse are declining in some parts of their range in Africa and has important implications for the disease they spread, particularly sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in cattle.
Lead author Dr Hester Weaving from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences said: “A single heatwave damaged both male and female fertility of disease-spreading tsetse flies sending populations into decline.
“Ultimately, heatwaves can drive insect biodiversity loss through both direct death and fertility losses, which is concerning given that heatwaves are increasing in frequency and intensity due to ongoing climate change.”
Scientists know that in a lot of animals, fertility is damaged at less extreme temperatures than those which kill them. In some cases, animals can become entirely sterile in response to heat, making them incapable of producing offspring. Generally, male fertility tends to be more temperature sensitive than female fertility, so the current results are surprising.
The team performed experiments in the lab using water baths at Bristol to mimic a heatwave event. To decipher if females or males were more sensitive to heatwave, they heat-exposed them separately and then paired them with unexposed members of the opposite sex. They measured how many offspring the flies produced and deaths over six weeks after the heatwave.

Dr Weaving said: “We looked at this in tsetse flies which spread the disease sleeping sickness in sub-Saharan Africa to humans, livestock and wild animals.
“They are fascinating insects as they develop a single egg at a time, feeding it as a larva in utero with a milk-like substance. The mother will then give birth to the larva which can be the same weight as themselves.”
The researchers have shown that male fertility being more heat sensitive is not common to all insects.
Senior author on the study, Dr Sinead English, said: “Our study provides important insights to how climate change will affect disease-carrying insects. We can’t assume that patterns in tsetse match those found in better-studied lab systems like seed beetles or fruit flies.”
Now further insect species should be measured to see if this result is widespread among other insect species with important implications on their global distributions in the face of climate change.

A protein engineering method using simple, cost-effective experiments and machine learning models can predict which proteins will be effective for a given purpose, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers.
The method has far-reaching potential to assemble proteins and peptides for applications from industry tools to therapeutics. For instance, this technique can help speed up the development of stabilized peptides for treating diseases in ways that current medicines can’t, including improving how exclusively antibodies bind to their targets in immunotherapy.
“The rules that govern how proteins work, from sequence to structure to function, are so complicated. Contributing to the interpretability of protein engineering efforts is particularly exciting,” said Marshall Case, a doctoral graduate of chemical engineering at U-M and first author of the study.
Currently, most protein engineering experiments use complex, labor-intensive methods and expensive instruments to attain very precise data. The long process limits how much data can be acquired, and the complicated methods are challenging to learn and execute — a trade-off for precision.
“Our method has shown that for many applications, you can avoid these complicated methods,” said Case, now a computational biologist at Manifold Biotechnologies.
The updated method starts by sorting cells into two groups, known as binary sorting, based on whether they express a desired trait — like binding to fluorescent molecules — or not. Then, the cells are sequenced to get the underlying DNA codes for the proteins of interest. Machine learning algorithms then reduce the noise in the sequencing data to identify the best possible protein.
“Rather than selecting the ‘best book’ from the library, it’s like reading many books, then piecing together different pages from different stories to come up with the best book possible, even if it wasn’t in your original library,” said Greg Thurber, U-M associate professor of chemical engineering and corresponding author on the paper. “I was surprised to see the robustness of this technique using simple, binary sorting data.”
Further enhancing its accessibility, the method uses linear machine learning models, which are easier to interpret compared to models with dozens of parameters.
“Because we can learn physical rules about how the proteins are actually working, we can use linear equations to model nonlinear protein behavior and make better drugs that way,” Case said.
The research was conducted at the Advanced Genomics Core, Center for Structural Biology, Biological Mass Spectrometry Facility and Proteomics & Peptide Synthesis Core.

Published18 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesNHS England has said any of its staff who miscarry in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy can take 10 days’ paid leave.Partners can take five days. And staff who miscarry after six months will still be offered paid maternity leave.The policy, adopted by Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust last year, is now being rolled out nationally.An official for the NHS in Wales said it would consider offering a similar scheme. BBC News has also contacted NHS Scotland and Northern Ireland.UK workers who miscarry before 24 weeks have no legal right to maternity or parental-bereavement leave – although, a number of large companies, including Tesco, Lidl, John Lewis and Santander, offer it.Some may choose to take sick pay or compassionate leave – but this is at the discretion of employers.Specialist support NHS England’s new pregnancy-and-baby-loss policy will also ask trusts to give staff paid time off to attend appointments, scans and tests, plus for any mental-health interventions.And staff returning to work after a miscarriage will be given specialist support by their NHS trust or baby-loss charities.After a trial at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Hospital Trust, staff said the policy meant they were twice as likely to keep working for the trust.Mother backs call for paid leave after miscarriage’You lose a baby and are expected to go back to work’One in four pregnancies in the UK ends in miscarriage. And a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) survey found just under a quarter of employees who had experienced pregnancy or baby loss had left their jobs following a poor response from their company.Women’s Health Strategy Minister Maria Caulfield said: “Our brilliant NHS workers look after us when we need it most and this new guidance is a positive step towards ensuring they are supported through the tragedy of losing of a baby.”Kath Abrahams, who runs the baby loss and pregnancy research charity Tommy’s, said: “As the largest employer in the UK, the NHS is sending a powerful signal that staff going through this experience deserve understanding, compassion and the right to grieve – and that support is possible no matter what your workplace looks like.”More on this storyMonzo offers paid leave after pregnancy lossPublished10 May 2021Firm to give staff fertility and miscarriage leavePublished29 October 2021Health trust offers paid leave for pregnancy lossPublished21 May 2023

Published35 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingBy Anna Collinson, Maryam Ahmed & Bella McShaneBBC News Women who freeze their eggs are being misled by some UK clinics about their chances of having a baby, a fertility charity says.The Fertility Network was reacting to BBC analysis that found 41% of clinics offering the service privately could be breaching advertising guidance.The watchdog which sets guidance says clinics “must not give false or misleading information”.It comes as a record number of people are freezing their eggs.The UK fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), also said it was concerned about the information given to those considering egg freezing.A successful pregnancy is not guaranteed by the procedure. Egg freezing for non-medical reasons, also known as social egg freezing, is an increasingly popular method for women to preserve their fertility in order to have children at a later date. The procedure is not normally available on the NHS unless you are having medical treatment which could affect your fertility, such as chemotherapy or gender-reassignment. There were more than 4,000 egg freezing procedures in the UK in 2021, compared with nearly 400 in 2011, according to HFEA.Egg Freezing and MeAnna Collinson explores the full story of egg freezing.Available now on BBC iPlayerWhen a person wants to have a baby, the frozen eggs can be defrosted and used in fertility treatments, such as IVF. No two cases are the same and there are many variables which can influence a patient’s chance of having a baby, such as their age, their health, how many eggs were successfully frozen and later thawed – plus the quality of the sperm.The BBC analysed the websites of the 78 fertility clinics that advertise private egg freezing in the UK. We found 32 websites (41%) didn’t make clear a patient’s chance of successfully having a baby in the future.Of that group, most of the websites were advertising successful thaw rates of 80-95% – a process where eggs are defrosted to be used in fertility treatments.But these clinics did not make clear that the chances of having a baby are dramatically lower because there are multiple stages of the process before an embryo is successfully implanted, through fertility treatments such as IVF. “I feel very angry for patients because they are being misled by this level of information,” said Dr Catherine Hill from charity, The Fertility Network. Few patients in the UK have come back to use their frozen eggs, but for those who do, the success rates are slightly lower than IVF using fresh eggs – which is about 20-30% per round depending on age. It could be as low as 5% for people in their 40s, according to HFEA. The BBC analysis also found that 31 of the clinics published defrost rates without stating how many patients the information was based on or specifying their sources.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the government watchdog, has guidance about the information which should appear on clinic websites. It says egg freezing is a “significant financial and emotional commitment” and patients must be “properly informed” about success rates and costs. The BBC spoke to more than 30 women who had undergone the procedure, as part of the documentary Egg Freezing and Me. They described it as expensive and invasive – but also empowering.Some of them felt that they had not been properly informed by clinics about the true costs of egg freezing or their chances of success. ‘I felt very alone’At 39, Natalie Thomas decided to freeze her eggs with a private fertility clinic but struggled to understand what her chances of having a baby were, based on the clinic’s information. “It was a journey that I felt very alone on and that I was the one that was driving it and was having to do a lot of research myself,” said Natalie, who is a science teacher with a background in statistics and data.Natalie later discovered on the fertility regulator’s website that the clinic she had chosen had lower success rates for pregnancy compared with the national average. “Had I known this information beforehand, I don’t think I would have frozen with that clinic,” she says.Natalie moved in with her mum in 2020 to save money for the egg freezing. Two years later – age 41 – she decided she was ready to become a parent She ended up spending £18,500 on medication, two rounds of egg retrieval, two years of storage and IVF treatment. She had the IVF at a different private clinic.After a successful pregnancy she gave birth to her son, Huxley, in March last year.”Holding Huxley for the first time, it was such a wonderful feeling,” she said. “I’m aware that I’m so lucky, and it’s not the same for all women.” We also showed our analysis to the British Fertility Society, a group for industry professionals. A spokesperson for the group raised concerns about the use of what he described “unusually high” defrost rates being displayed on some websites, without explaining what they are based on.Dr Ippokratis Sarris questioned if the statistics could possibly relate to “a cherry-picked group of patients” which he said would be “bad practice”. “It gives patients unrealistic expectations and it’s not fair on other clinics who are trying to be open and transparent,” he said.A patient’s personal chances of success should be discussed when they go to a clinic in person, added the doctor, but the information on a clinic’s website must still be transparent and should never mislead. The HFEA says it is the responsibility of the clinics to ensure patients are given all the information they need to be properly informed. It said it was concerned that does not always happen. It would like wider regulatory powers to fine clinics.A spokesperson for the Competition and Markets Authority said that all information provided by fertility clinics “must be clear, timely and easy to understand”. “We set out what we mean in the CMA’s Guidance for Fertility Clinics on consumer law. For example claims relating to egg freezing success rates are likely to be misleading if they cannot be proven, if they fail to explain the effect of age on the likely outcome, or if they fail to explain the difference between egg survival rates versus live birth rates.”Are you affected by the issues raised in this story? Share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways:WhatsApp: +44 7756 165803Tweet: @BBC_HaveYourSayUpload pictures or videoPlease read our terms & conditions and privacy policy

If you are reading this page and can’t see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and location with any submission. More on this storyEgg freezing gives woman ‘sense of control’Published10 January’Sharing my egg-freezing journey nearly broke me’Published19 June 2023

Published10 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, ReutersBy Josh ParryLGBT & Identity ProducerChildren will no longer routinely be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics, NHS England has confirmed.The decision comes after a review found there was “not enough evidence” they are safe or effective.Puberty blockers, which pause the physical changes of puberty, will now only be available as part of research.It comes weeks before an independent review into gender identity services in England is due to be published.An interim report from the review, published in 2022 by Dr Hilary Cass, had earlier found there were “gaps in evidence” around the drugs and called for a transformation in the model of care for children with gender-related distress.Dr Cass’s review follows a sharp rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which saw an increase from 250 per year to over 5,000 in 2022.New youth gender services further delayedChild gender clinic closure leaves uncertain futureWhat does transgender mean and what does the law say?Puberty supressing hormones – more commonly known as puberty blockers – work by suppressing the release of hormones that cause puberty and are often prescribed to children questioning their gender as a way of stopping physical changes such as breast development or facial hair.Fewer than 100 young people in England are currently prescribed puberty blockers by the NHS. They will all able to continue their treatment.NHS England held a public consultation on their usage and last year introduced an interim policy which stated they should only be given as part of research trials or in “exceptional circumstances”.The BBC understands that the new policy, confirmed on Tuesday, will not allow them to be prescribed “routinely” outside of a research trial, but that individual clinicians can still apply to have the drugs funded for patients on a case-by-case basis.Gids is due to close at the end of March. Two new NHS services due in London and Liverpool are set to open at the beginning of April, followed by a number of regional specialist centres over the next two years.Health Minister Maria Caulfield said: “We have always been clear that children’s safety and wellbeing is paramount, so we welcome this landmark decision by the NHS.”Ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers will help ensure that care is based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and is in the best interests of the child.”The consultation on the future of gender services received more than 4,000 responses, including 10% from trans adults and 5% from clinicians.John Stewart, national director of specialised commissioning at NHS England, said: “Given that the debate is often very polarised, so too were the responses to the consultation.”Many people said the policy didn’t go far enough in terms of still allowing potential access [to puberty blockers] through research, and others saying clearly they disagreed fundamentally and that these should be routinely available to everyone who believes they need it.”The BBC understands NHS England aims to begin its study into the use of puberty blockers by December 2024, and is yet to decide who can take part.More on this storyPuberty blockers to be given only in clinical researchPublished9 June 2023