24/06/2022
🧐 Does isotretinoin affect female fertility?
The short answer is:
👩🏼⚕️👨🏻⚕️ if yes, only temporary.
The ovarian reserve (the capacity of the o***y to provide eggs) seems to decrease during isotretinoin treatment but goes back to pretreatment values 12 months after treatment discontinuation.
The long answer is:
Only small cohort studies followed women during isotretinoin treatment and assessed hormonal levels and/or performed ultrasound imaging examinations to assess their ovarian reserve.
The most complete (including both hormones and ultrasound) of these studies was performed by Aksoy et al (2015). They followed 82 women and found that the anti Müllerian hormone, the total ovarian volume and the antral follicle count significantly decreased after 6 months of isotretinoin treatment.
The same group performed a second study (Cinar 2017) and further followed 79 of those women. One year after the end of the isotretinoin treatment all the values indicative for the ovarian reserve were back to their pretreatment values.
Therefore, the effect of isotretinoin on ovarian reserve appears to be temporary and to diminish over time.