40 with AMH of 10.4...... what does it mean?

[Hopeful199]

I am about to start IVF in the new year and my AMH levels came back at 10.4 - trouble is I don't know what this actually means!?

Can anyone help me decipher if this is good/ bad or indifferent!???

Thanks

Hi @Hopeful199 first of all good luck for your treatment. It's exciting and scary starting IVF, I know.

AMH levels are just one measure of ovarian reserve. They give you an indication of fertility but really need to be understood in conjunction with your Antral Follicle Count (how many follicles your ovaries produce each month which reduces as you age) and some other hormone numbers.

They are also only really relevant to IVF because in natural conception you only need to produce one egg anyway (they're not irrelevant to natural conception but less significant)

There are also different units that AMH can be measured in. Yours are in Pmol but some measures are in ng/ml so if you hear people talking about having a level of 0.8 or 1.4 they are possibly using the other measurement unit.

10.4 is reasonably good for aged 40. If you have a good follicle count and your hormone profile is as expected then you could, in theory, respond ok to the IVF drugs. In IVF you generally want to get a good number of healthy eggs in order to produce a few good embryos for transfer. So I'd be feeling happy with that result in as much as it tells you.

Hope it goes well x

@Hopeful199 Hi, as far as I can see an amh of 10 in a 40 year old is about average or even a bit better for your age. So if you Google you can see charts with averages on them. However as we all know one specific measure doesn’t always tell you the full story or how you will react to ivf. You’d need to know afc and fsh for a fuller picture I think. I have a lower level of amh for my age and still got a good number of eggs on EC. To me 10 sounds like a fair number for 40! The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) specifies that less than 5.4 pmol/l will lead to a “low response”, and greater than or equal to 25.0 pmol/l will lead to a “high response”. So youre about bang in the middle. However there are many variables such as age, afc, fsh etc but I think your amh could be considered not a limiting factor in conceiving. Best of luck!

As per Dr Google;
What will an AMH result tell me?
Age Range AMH (pmol/l)
20-29 years 13.1 - 53.8
30-34 years 6.8 - 47.8
35 - 39 years 5.5 - 37.4
40-44 years 0.7 - 21.2

Thee is also lots of scaremongering on the internet with lots of fertility pages stating that numbers like over 25pmol are ‘optimal’, that’s silly high and serves only to scare people! Too high an amh can suggest PCOS. There have also been some studies claiming that amh predicts when you will hit menopause but these are not accepted measures yet. Listen to your consultant. I panicked when I got my amh as it was below average for my age but my consultant was totally unbothered and didn’t even mention it as all my other measures were fine. As you can see from my previous post there is a big range for each age group, so a low amh doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t conceive or you will hit menopause soon as many other factors come into play. I think you only need to worry when it’s starts getting very low as that is a sign of impending menopause. But at 10 I think you’re fine!

Thank you so much @BlueSilver23 @Janefx40 I really appreciate you explaining it so well. Guess I need to wait to get a better picture from my other results too.

It is a minefield and I really am just starting out! Scared to feel excited but not wanting to feel anxious!

Dr Google is definitely not my friend!!!

Thank you again x

Hi @Hopeful199
I am 41 and my AMH is 5pmol ... so I wish I was 10! lol ... when I had my first IVF baby aged 36 my AMH was 7 and I had my second IVF baby when I was 39 and my AMH was 5.2.
Good luck x

@firefly37 sorry I hope it didn’t come across as insensitive?! I genuinely have no idea where to start with all this.

Feel like the conversations happen so quickly and never really sure what’s been said or what it means?!!

But I am so glad it worked for you and your babies….. fingers crossed I have the same result!

Thank you so much! x

@Hopeful199 I know it is daunting. I had a massive wobble before we started IVF. I was nervous at every stage. Would I have side effects from the drugs, would each procedure be painful? Etc etc. it was all fine. I've done 7 Treatment rounds now of various types. We have a nearly-3 year old from round 2.

If I could give advice to myself when I was starting out, it would be to try to hand the thinking and worry over to the consultant and clinic. I know how desperate I was to work out what my results meant, how likely is it to work etc but this stuff is seriously complex and, as long as you trust your clinic, it's best to hand all of that worrying and thinking over to them. I had to do an AMH test last year and I actually asked not to see the result - I don't need to know - we're doing IVF either way, the result could only worry me.

Infertility is a hard journey and we're used to having to figure out all the answers, what steps to take etc ourselves. The good thing about IVF is that you have now arrived at a place where there are doctors and nurses (and embryologists) to do all that for you.

Best of luck xxx

That is great advice @Janefx40 thank you so much

Trying for babies is such a soul destroying process (after it hasn’t worked for so long) that one thing I am a little relieved about is science taking over and at least removing the stress from counting days, peeing on sticks and scheduling BD!

I keep trying to remind myself that whatever the odds; they are still better than my natural chances each month which due to endo and age are pretty slim!

I def need to try and relax and have some faith in the professionals like you say. I am naturally a person who likes to be in control so infertility generally is a big fat struggle….. guess IVF just feels like new overwhelming territory!

Thanks so much for your kind words and congrats on your little one. I hope you have more success soon if you are continuing to do more rounds? X