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Chances are that if you are trying to get pregnant you have probably been overwhelmed by many acronyms and abbreviations. It’s important to track this “alphabet soup,” because a number of tests and procedures play a critical role in determining the ability to get pregnant. One term that you may have heard – and if you haven’t, you should definitely familiarize yourself with it – is FSH.

FSH stands for follicle-stimulating hormone, a hormone made by the pituitary gland that stimulates follicle and egg growth in the ovary and sperm development in men. An abnormal FSH test can help reveal menopause, polycystic ovary syndrome, or ovarian cysts in women, or low sperm count or underdeveloped testes in men. All of these conditions can have detrimental effects on fertility, so it is very important for people to have their FSH levels tested if they are having difficulty getting pregnant.

Many of the conditions that the FSH test checks for might seem to be fairly obvious, including early menopause or Turner syndrome, but in fact many of these can be first detected or officially confirmed through this blood test. FSH levels have a narrow “normal” range, and numbers that are too high or too low can be a problem when it comes to infertility.

There is no single test that can determine the causes of infertility or the likelihood of overcoming fertility issues, but FSH is useful for checking multiple conditions and providing accurate information on the health of both men and women who are hoping to conceive a child. In our next blog we will discuss another important hormone, anti-mullerian hormone, or AMH.

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