How does chemotherapy make one more like to be infertile exactly?
In: Biology
this stems from one of the downsides of chemotherapy which is it’s lack of specificity. it kills cancer cells but it also kills some of the other healthy cells.
one mechanism some chemo drugs target is cell division as cancer is associated with a high rate of cellular division. However, the process of creating egg and sperm relies on cellular division, so the types of drugs that target cell division will stop of the production of egg and sperm
First, understand what chemotherapy is – it’s functionally poisoning your body with the goal of killing or stunting cancerous cells at the same time.
Exactly what kind of chemicals a given chemotherapy treatment will include are specific to the patient, and what type of cancer they’re suffering from.
One popular category of chemicals – called alkylating agents – work by damaging the DNA inside cells to prevent them being able to reproduce themselves. This has obvious benefits when targeting cancerous cells, but the issue is that even if you attempt to only target cancerous cells, they may affect other cells in the area.
If alkylating agents act on your reproductive organs – the ovaries or testes – they can become damaged. This can be a danger if you’re being treated for ovarian or testicular cancer, or any cancer in the pelvic region.
For ovaries, they can lose the ability to properly release ovums for fertilisation – this can sometimes be overcome with IVF – or potentially damage the ovums themselves, rendering them inert and useless.
For males, the alkylating agents can damage the production of healthy sperm, either fully or partially, all of which impacts fertility.
The nature of cancer is the perpetual youth in it’s rapidly multiplying cells, chemo takes aim at young cells. Unfortunately there are a number of cell lines that are also constantly young in their function; bone marrow cells that make blood cells, hair follicles that constantly grow hair, and our reproductive cells that make egg and sperm cells are among them.
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