Flushing Fallopian Tubes for Fertility

Looking for a medical breakthrough you can use that doesn't involve getting injected with nanobots or a re-weaving of your DNA strands? How about an all-natural fertility boost that's over a century old?

Way back in 1917, doctors began injecting a special dye into women's fallopian tubes as a means to help figure out fertility problems. It was meant solely as a diagnostic procedure, but over the course of the past hundred years some women have noticed that the procedure seemed to help them get pregnant. The procedure is known as hysterosalpingography (HSG).

"Over the past century, pregnancy rates among infertile women reportedly increased after their tubes had been flushed with either water or oil during this X-ray procedure. Until now, it has been unclear whether the type of solution used in the procedure was influencing the change in fertility," says Professor Ben Mol, from the University of Adelaide's Robinson Research Institute in Australia.

Mol created the “H2Oil Study,” a project that compared the benefits of flushing the fallopian tubes with either an oil-based or water-based solution in 1,119 women. The participants were divided into an “oil” group, whose tubes were flushed with an iodized poppy seed oil, and a “water” group, whose tube-flushing best resembled that of their their 1917 counterparts, with plain old H2O.

The results were dramatic: Almost 40 percent of infertile women in the oil group and 29 percent of infertile women in the water group achieved successful pregnancies within six months of the technique being performed.

Besides being low-fuss, low-muss, and effective, the Aussie scientists' fallopian flush has the added benefit of being a tiny fraction of the cost of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), the usual go-to procedure for couples unable to conceive normally.

"The rates of successful pregnancy were significantly higher in the oil-based group, and after only one treatment. This is an important outcome for women who would have had no other course of action other than to seek IVF treatment. It offers new hope to infertile couples," Professor Mol says.

This research article even has a feel-good human interest ending. When Professor Mol told his family about his latest project, they broke the news to him that his own mother had undergone an HSG in the 60s after being considered infertile for nine years.

"My mother went from being infertile for many years to becoming pregnant, and I was born in 1965. I also have a younger brother. So it’s entirely possible – in fact, based on our team's research, it's highly likely – that my brother and I are both the result of this technique helping my mother to achieve fertility," Mol said.

The research has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine.