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New Advanced Fertility Monitor Can Help Couples Conceive Without IVF


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DuoFertility reveals how its ingenious technology makes Body Basal Temperature measurement for ovulation highly reliable

First public demonstrations at the Fertility Show, Olympia, London on 6 & 7 November

Cambridge, UK – 8 October 2009. Getting pregnant can be very difficult for some women. 1 in 6 have difficulties, which is an increasing problem that is predicted to rise to 1 in 3 by 2020. IVF is expensive and intrusive with a low success rate of 1 in 5 with decreasing success rates for women in their mid to late thirties, which is commonly the age when career women are now deciding to try and start families. The DuoFertility™ advanced fertility monitor offers a new, natural way to solve this problem and will be shown for the first time at a public exhibition at the Fertility Show, Olympia, London on the 6th and 7th November 2009 at Booth number 16. It automatically measures a woman’s temperature 20,000 times every 24 hours to provide a very accurate reading of temperature changes in her Basal Body Temperature (BBT), which is the lowest temperature attained by the body during rest – usually when asleep. Ovulation causes a change in BBT enabling DuoFertility to indicate when a couple should try and conceive.

DuoFertility automatically collects BBT for analysis, and in addition a number of other general fertility clues and health symptoms, such as ovulation pain, cervical mucus quality and illness, can be manually input into the monitor to aid the analysis and improve the prediction. DuoFertility has developed advanced, proprietary algorithms that analyse all the input to predict the optimum time to try and conceive up to 6 days in advance. DuoFertility is currently the only fertility monitor on the market to incorporate these factors into its analysis, making it the solution of choice for couples that want to put all the chances of achieving pregnancy on their side.

Dr D Naumann, GP in Paderborn, Germany explained, “One of the traditional methods for ovulation monitoring is the measurement of BBT. However, because of the way it was measured in the past, it was not considered reliable by some experts. It required the woman to wake up early at the same time everyday to make a measurement with a thermometer and so it often caused them stress, worry and loss of sleep which was not favourable to achieving pregnancy. Ideally one needs a continuous measurement of temperature throughout the night to determine BBT.”

Dr Oriane Chausiaux, DuoFertility’s Chief Scientific Officer, added that, “The very actions of waking up to take the reading could change the body temperature. Additionally, as traditional oral BBT measurement provided a single data point per day, it was often difficult for the user to identify the temperature change until 2 or 3 days after ovulation -- by which point the fertility window of opportunity was over. It took considerable discipline to take the temperature correctly every day without fail – miss a day and you could miss the first data point for ovulation altogether. All these factors, combined with the need for the couple to graph the data manually and interpret the data themselves left too much room for error and consequently, in the UK, BBT was not the preferred ovulation monitoring method.”

However, the fundamental science behind BBT as an indicator of ovulation is well established. The ruptured follicle left behind after the release of the egg forms the corpus luteum, which secretes progesterone that causes a rise in BBT of as little as 0.3⁰C. The challenge is to find a way to accurately detect this change, or biphasic pattern, on an automatic basis, isolating it from the normal body temperature changes that can go up or down by a couple of degrees during a day – solving this challenge is exactly what DuoFertility does.

DuoFertility consists of two parts – the sensor and the display unit. The coin-sized sensor is discreetly attached under the arm using an adhesive patch, where it can be worn continuously and removed and replaced as required. Patented technology enables it to measure a woman’s temperature to within hundredths of a degree, enabling changes in BBT to be accurately determined. This non-intrusive, fully automatic system collects more than 20,000 temperature measurements during each 24 hour period and processes this data for analysis. The sensor is wirelessly linked to the small, hand-held display unit which is roughly the size of a computer mouse. This further analyses the data from the sensor displays fertile days up to six days in advance. This prediction enables couples to plan ahead for when to try for a baby. “Having a few days notice to plan for a romantic evening, according to our users’ feedback, removes a huge amount of stress and can make a significant improvement to the chances of becoming pregnant,” said Dr Shamus Husheer, the inventor of DuoFertility and CEO of the company behind it, Cambridge Temperature Concepts Ltd.

“All data can be displayed on a computer for examination in greater detail by the user or her doctor. DuoFertility also goes a step further - under strict confidentiality, each entry is sent to DuoFertility’s server to contribute as input to the DuoFertility algorithms. The algorithms learn and improve the accuracy of the prediction as more data is collected and also draw on patterns and data from other women in the company’s database for further optimisation,” added Dr Husheer. “Our sophisticated software also flags up when someone has unusual results so that our fertility experts can analyse the data and contact the user with advice. We establish very close relationships with our users to assist them with the challenge of becoming pregnant and users really appreciate having our expert help and advice.”

Learn more about DuoFertility at www.duofertility.com

Notes to the editors
Interviews with DuoFertility’s inventor, Dr Shamus Husheer, can be arranged via Nigel Robson, Vortex PR. Email nigel@vortexpr.com Tel 01481 233080 (+44 1481 233080)
Interviews with couples that have achieved pregnancy may be possible by arrangement.
Press images and Logos are available at www.duofertility.com/press/press-images-and-logos
Following notes contain: About DuoFertility, IVF issues and Science behind DuoFertility
About DuoFertility
DuoFertility exists to help women become pregnant naturally and conveniently by providing the best available fertility monitoring solution backed up with personalised help and support from a team of world-class fertility experts.
DuoFertility is a precise and convenient way to predict and detect a woman’s fertile days. It uses the Body Basal Temperature (BBT) method, which is a scientifically proven way to detect the fertile days with 99% accuracy. The advanced DuoFertility fertility monitor is unobtrusive and works by automatically measuring the woman’s temperature 20,000 times a day with extreme accuracy. It does not require women to wake up early to measure their temperature manually or repeat inconvenient and disagreeable urine tests. Users can also choose to view the data gathered by DuoFertility on a computer at home; this data can also be used to help doctors provide the best medical advice to the couple. Because DuoFertility is entirely natural and non-invasive, it can be used in conjunction with any other method that relies on natural intercourse to maximise a couple’s chances of success each and every monthly cycle. DuoFertility is a cost-effective alternative to assisted reproductive treatments, such as IVF.
Watch a short video demonstration at http://www.duofertility.com/duofertility/product-video-demos
DuoFertility is designed and marketed by a team of fertility experts at Cambridge Temperature Concepts Ltd., a privately owned company based in Cambridge, UK.
DuoFertility is available for purchase at www.duofertility.com. It is manufactured in the UK and priced at £495, a fraction of the cost of invasive procedures such as IVF. This price includes the sensor and handheld device, along with comprehensive support from the DuoFertility team on data interpretation and guidance on achieving conception.
The company is currently offering a 12 month guarantee scheme if the woman does not get pregnant provided that the product is purchased before 31 December 2009 and used as directed.

IVF issues

A study from summer 2008 from the department of public health of the Netherlands indicated that the chances of a spontaneous pregnancy without treatment, while waiting for an IVF, is up to 25%. DuoFertility is designed to ensure that women have the best possible chance of becoming pregnant naturally by knowing exactly they are most fertile – something that many women don’t actually know, and which may lead to unnecessary and expensive fertility treatments.

Typical costs of an IVF treatment are up to £3500 per session. Many women need repeated cycles before they have a successful pregnancy, and often the NHS will not fund multiple attempts. The demand for IVF is increasing by 6% a year as, according to the Times, nearly 37,000 individual patients and couples were treated at in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinics in 2007, the highest figures yet recorded, new figures show. For women aged 35 or under, 32.3 per cent of treatments given in 2007 resulted in a live birth. For women older than 44 undergoing the same treatment, the chances of having a baby were only 3.1 per cent (i.e. 10 times lower), reflecting the impact of age on IVF success.

Science behind DuoFertility

The initial results collected by the DuoFertility device on its accuracy can be viewed at http://www.duofertility.com/duofertility/why-duofertility/accurate

Further studies on Body Basal Temperature methodology and its 99% accuracy used in DuoFertility are explained at http://www.duofertility.com/99-percent-accuracy

Why is the charting of manual BBT measurement so variable?
The very act of waking and moving to take the temperature means that the body has warmed up above the basal temperature affecting the accuracy of the results; in fact the body generally changes temperature more on waking than at any point during sleep. Data collected by one of the DuoFertility users who compared DuoFertility and their basal thermometer during an initial trial clearly showed that the act of waking up and taking a temperature measurement was causing the temperature to increase and thus masking the true value of the BBT.

The likelihood of user errors using BBT charting has been used by some urine test manufacturers to down play the BBT method in favour of their own products. However, DuoFertility collects 20,000 temperature measurements every 24 hours, which allow it to pick the best representation of body basal temperature every night. By being worn continuously, the user doesn’t have to remember to wake early to take a temperature measurement, reducing the stress involved.

“It is a very stressful time trying to conceive if you know that you have problems and they helped take all that stress and worry away as did the automatic way that the sensor works – fit and forget! DuoFertility made everything stress-free, easy and relaxed – and no more early morning alarms to take my temperature! It is a great product – any woman who is having difficulties conceiving should consider it.” Marie, after 4 and half months and 3 cycles using DuoFertility became pregnant. The full story can be found at http://www.duofertility.com/testimonials/marie

Why is DuoFertility so much superior to the other systems?
DuoFertility provides medical professionals with an objective measurement of temperature and information about their patients’ cycles. “When the temperature chart is variable, we do not know if there is a medical reason for it, such as anovulation for example, or if the user has not been able to make good measurements. DuoFertility will provide invaluable data that is objective and not biased by user’s behaviour,” explained Dr D Naumann, GP in Paderborn, Germany.

DuoFertility measures temperature but can also use other fertility clues in the analysis. These fertility clues are regularly used by experienced Natural Family Planning practitioners, but DuoFertility makes the analysis of all this information easy and fully automatic, which is very valuable to a couple that has not received the relevant training. All the user has to do is to record their observations and DuoFertility will identify whether they are being accurately detected and therefore if they should be used in the analysis.

Urine tests
Urine tests are designed to predict ovulation but are not able to confirm that ovulation actually occurred, which is a real problem for medical practitioners if they want to assess the regularity of their patient’s ovulation for example.

A urine ovulation test is a single use device that might tell the user if they are likely to ovulate in the next day or two. This provides no historical data and only provides a limited ability to plan. DuoFertility records all the information and can be reviewed at any time. With DuoFertility, there is less hassle, and no mess involved and, most importantly, the user’s own data is continually reviewed by DuoFertility’s computer systems and in-house fertility experts, who help users interpret this data and potentially identify a range of underlying conditions.

It is also important to note that many subfertile women suffer from hormonal unbalance, and will often experience problem using the urine tests as it measures hormone levels. For example, women suffering from PCOS (Polycystic Ovulation Syndrome) in particular, or women undergoing hormonal treatment, or using ovulation induction medications such as Clomid will not be able to use reliably the LH urine tests.

DuoFertility is a trademark of Cambridge Temperature Concepts Limited




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