Reproduction disorders

We distinguish between two types of reproductive disorders:


 * infertility – a woman is able to get pregnant, but is unable to carry and give birth to a viable child,


 * sterility = infertility – inability to conceive (more precisely, with regular intercourse lasting more than two years).

Causes
According to data from the American National Infertility Society, about 12% of infertility cases are caused by obesity or, less often, by being underweight.
 * Women : dysfunction of the uterus, obstruction of the fallopian tubes, stress, hormonal imbalance, infection, promiscuity, immunological sterility (in which an immune reaction against sperm occurs).
 * Men : various damage to the testicles, infections (most often parotitis or tramatization), obstruction of the vas deferens, spermatogenesis disorder (the sperm produced are deformed, poorly functional, even immobile), azoospermia (there are no sperm in the ejaculate at all).

Reproductive disorders used to be blamed mainly on women. Today, however, we know that both sexes are balanced. Percentagewise, in 40-45% the cause is on the woman's side, as well as on the man's side. In 10-20% even both partners have the disorder.
 * In both sexes, the cause can be genetic.

Reproductive disorders are an increasingly common phenomenon in the population. A separate field dealing with this topic was created - reproductive medicine.

Medical procedures that aim to help correct these disorders are called assisted reproduction. It involves manipulation of germ cells,eggs or sperm, or embryos, including their storage for the future and solutions using donor cells. Assisted reproduction is thus the subject of numerous ethical and religious disputes. But it is a field that is moving forward very quickly. In 2010, the British physiologist R. Edwards won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for advances in reproduction, especially for the development of the method of fertilization in a test tube(in vitro fertilization).