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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Radiol Imaging 2023; 33(04): 463-470
DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1768964
Original Article

Age-Specific Nomograms for Antral Follicle Count in Fertile and Infertile Indian Women: A Comparative Study

Shivi Jain 
1   Department of Radiodiagnosis & Imaging, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
,
Ram Chandra Shukla 
1   Department of Radiodiagnosis & Imaging, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
,
Madhu Jain
2   Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
,
Rabindra Nath Mishra
3   Centre of Biostatistics, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
› Author Affiliations Funding None.
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Abstract

Objectives The aim of this study was to develop age-specific nomograms for antral follicle count (AFC) in fertile and infertile Indian women and (2) to compare the influence of age on AFC in both groups.

Setting and Design It is a prospective cross-sectional study in a tertiary-care hospital in north-central India.

Methods and Material One-thousand four-hundred seventy-eight fertile and 1,447 infertile women (primary infertility) of reproductive age (18–49 years) were recruited. One-thousand one-hundred eighty-one fertile and 1,083 infertile women fulfilled the selection criteria for the study. Transvaginal ultrasonography was done on the second or third day of the menstrual cycle.

Statistical Analysis Age-specific nomograms for AFC were built for the 3rd, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th, and 97th percentiles in both groups. Correlation and regression analysis was done to estimate the relationship between the study variables. Statistical analysis was done by using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 20.

Results At every age, each percentile value of AFC was lower in infertile than in fertile women. The decline of AFC with increasing age was linear in both fertile (r = − 0.431, p < 0.001) and infertile (r = − 0.520, p < 0.001) women; however, the rate was higher in the latter (0.50 follicle/year) than in former (0.44 follicle/year) group. The variation in AFC explained by age was 16.3% in fertile and 22.7% in infertile women.

Conclusion AFC decreased linearly with advancing age in both fertile and infertile women, but more rapidly in the latter. The age only modestly explained the decline of AFC. The age-specific percentile thresholds for AFC should be used instead of age-independent constant thresholds in infertility counselling.

Keywords

antral follicle count - age-specific nomograms - infertile - fertile

Note

The authors would like to declare that they have published the manuscript, using part of the data of this paper. However, both studies are not entirely the same.




Publication History

Article published online:
16 May 2023

© 2023. Indian Radiological Association. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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