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More evidence that hormone testing for women's fertility does not work.
更多证据标明，检测女性生养才能的荷尔蒙测试并不见效。
Women seeking to defer motherhood are often encouraged to check their fertility.
人们通常会鼓舞盼望推延生养工夫的女性检测本人的生养才能。
Though fecundity is tied to age, the effect of time's passage varies.
固然生养才能与年事有关，但其对差别人的影响差别。
Some 35-year-olds find they cannot get pregnant.
一些人35岁发明本人无法有身。
Others manage at the first attempt.
另有人第一次实验就能乐成。
The main causes of fertility's reduction with advancing years are declines in the number and quality of the eggs in a woman's ovaries.
生养才能随着年事增长而降落的次要缘由是，女性年事越大，卵巢中卵子的数目越少，质量越低。
Unlike men, who manufacture sperm throughout their post-pubertal lives, albeit in ever-decreasing quantities, all of a woman's potential eggs develop while she is still a fetus.
而男性则差别。固然男性制造精子的数目会不时增加，但他们在芳华期后一直都在制造精子；而女性的一切卵子都是在胎儿时期开端发育的。
A newborn girl has over 1m of them.
一个刚出生的女孩有100多万个卵子。
By puberty, she is left with about 400,000.
到了芳华期，就只剩下约莫40万。
When the menopause arrives, that has been whittled down below 1,000, which are likely to be duds.
到了更年期，卵子数目会低于1000，而且很能够质量很低。
But fertility tests currently on offer neither count the number of eggs remaining nor assess their quality.
但现在为女性提供的生养测试既不盘算其剩余的卵子数目，也不评价卵子的质量。
Rather, they rely on an indirect approach - sampling what are hoped to be relevant hormones.
这些测试依赖于一种直接的办法——对能够与女性生养才能相干的荷尔蒙停止采样。
Hormone tests do have some value in estimating the timing of menopause and the success of harvesting eggs for in vitro fertilisation.
荷尔蒙测试在预测更年期的工夫和预测收罗卵子停止体外受精的乐成率方面的确有肯定的代价。
But forecasting pregnancy?
但在预测有身方面呢？
The evidence suggests that they can't.
证据标明，荷尔蒙测试在这方面没无效果。
One test-sceptic is Anne Steiner of the Duke Fertility Centre, in North Carolina.
北卡罗来纳州杜克生养中央的安妮·斯坦纳就对测试持疑心态度。
She suspects hormone tests do indicate how many eggs are left to a woman, but that this is not what matters - rather, it is the eggs' quality which is crucial.
她以为荷尔蒙测试的确能检测一个女人还剩下几多卵子，但这并不是题目的要害——卵子的质量才是要害。
Between 2008 and 2016 Dr. Steiner and her colleagues ran the Time to Conceive study.
2008至2016年，斯坦纳博士和她的同事们停止了“有身工夫”研讨。
Its purpose was to determine whether hormone levels could indeed assess a woman's fertility, independent of her age.
目标是在不思索年事的状况下，确定荷尔蒙程度能否可以评价女性的生养才能。
The team found then that those levels had no value in predicting pregnancy in the year subsequent to testing.
研讨小组随后发明，荷尔蒙程度测试无法预测一年内能否可以有身。
Now, in a follow up to the original investigation, just published in Fertility and Sterility, Dr. Steiner has shown that they have no longer-term predictive power, either.
如今，在方才宣布在《生养与不育》期刊上的后续研讨中，斯坦纳博士标明，荷尔蒙程度也无法用于更临时的预测。
