After 35, the number of egg cells available will decline, causing a diminished ovarian reserve. The quality of the woman’s egg cells is a major factor in her fertility potential and the likelihood of having a child.

Eggs of high quality will have the best chance of developing a normal embryo for implanting and resulting in a successful pregnancy.

In addition to the natural decline of egg number in age, egg cells can be damaged or lost more quickly by some medical treatments which is cancer therapy or radiation.

Smoking is known to cause an earlier decline in egg quality.

Egg quality determines embryo quality, therefore, poor egg quality is often associated with chromosome abnormality embryo – known as aneuploidy.

Aneuploidy often results to miscarriage, and often the woman does not know she was pregnant. Less often, aneuploidy results to babies born with defects.

In women over the age of 35, there is an increase in number of eggs with genetic abnormalities. As eggs mature, they undergo a process of cell division called “myosis”.

The complex process of myosis must occur with a 100% accuracy. Otherwise, genetic errors will occu during the division process and the eggs will not be genetically normal.

A normal egg is genetically called a eucloid. Abnormal eggs are called aneucloid.

If the genetics of the egg cell DNA has been damaged, this can result in difficulty in having a healthy baby.

There is no blood test that directly measures the quality of the egg cell to see if it’s normal chromosomally. The only way to determine if an egg cell has a normal chromosome is to do a biopsy of an embryo formed from an egg cell, then a genetic testing.