New medical procedure promises to postpone menopause in women by up to 20 years

A new medical procedure in the UK is offering women the chance to press pause on their menopause for up to 20 years. This procedure could help women who suffer from serious problems like heart conditions and osteoporosis and more common symptoms of menopause like mood swings, anxiety, sleeping problems, hot flushes, and reduced sex drive. UK based company ProFam offers this surgery to women upto the age of 40. It can cost anywhere from £7,000 and £11,000 and takes only 30 minutes to do. Nine women in the UK from the ages 22-36 have already had the surgery. The procedure involves removing a small portion of the ovarian tissue through keyhole surgery and freezing at -150ºC temperature. When the women reach menopause age, the tissue will be grafted back and this is supposed to ‘kickstart’ natural hormones that delay the onset of menopause. [caption id=“attachment_7112891” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Nine women have gone through with this surgery.[/caption] Professor Simon Fishel, co-founder of ProFam, told Metro that ‘Women are living longer than at any time in human history. It’s quite likely that many women will be in the menopause for longer than their fertile period. We are empowering women to take control of their own health by naturally delaying their menopause.’ Yousri Afifi, the company’s chief medical officer, spoke to The Sunday Times in an interview, “This is the first project in the world to provide healthy women ovarian tissue cryopreservation purely to delay the menopause.” A procedure similar to this is conducted on women who receive treatment for cancer. Doctors remove some of their ovarian tissue and then freeze it. When they want to have children, the tissue is grafted next to their fallopian tubes. The amount of time that menopause is delayed depends on when the tissue is taken and when it is put back. The tissue from a 25-year old will postpone menopause for 20 years, but the tissue taken from a 40-year old woman will only pause menopause for five years.