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Potential Etiologies of Unexplained Infertility in Females

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Unexplained Infertility

Abstract

Unexplained infertility (UI) indicates the absence of an apparent cause for the failure of a couple to achieve pregnancy after 12 months of unprotected intercourse. UI is a multifactorial disorder of reproduction that occurs in approximately 15–30 % of couples presenting with infertility. Despite significant improvements that have occurred in the diagnosis and treatment of reproductive disorders and therefore many potential etiologies of UI have been better understood, many couples still have no explanation for their infertility, even after the most accurate diagnostic workup. In this chapter, we discuss the combination of female factors that potentially underlie UI such as ovarian factors (including abnormal ovarian folliculogenesis and ovulatory dysfunction), tuboperitoneal factors, fertilization failure, alterations in endometrial receptivity and embryonic factors. UI should not be regarded as a permanent condition but rather a relative failure to achieve pregnancy, and as such, it should be better considered as subfertility, since time may lead these couples to conceive without treatment, with the duration of infertility and the female age being the most important prognostic factors. Nevertheless, treatment-independent live-birth rates have been estimated to be between 40 and 60 % at 3 years, the results of treatment outcomes for UI are promising.

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  1. Department of Reproduction, Instituto Valenciano Iinfertilidad (IVI), Ronda General Mitre (Pza. Belianes), 14, 08017, Barcelona, Spain

    Daniela Galliano MD, PhD & Antonio Pellicer

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  1. Daniela Galliano MD, PhD
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  2. Antonio Pellicer
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Correspondence to Daniela Galliano MD, PhD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York, USA

    Glenn L. Schattman

  2. Andrology and Human Reproduction Clinic Referral Center for Male Reproduction, ANDROFERT, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    Sandro C. Esteves

  3. Andrology Center & Center for Reproductive Medicine, Lerner College of Medicine Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    Ashok Agarwal

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Galliano, D., Pellicer, A. (2015). Potential Etiologies of Unexplained Infertility in Females. In: Schattman, G., Esteves, S., Agarwal, A. (eds) Unexplained Infertility. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2140-9_13

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