# Relevance of AMH and AFC to natural conception?



## AnnaC3 (Jun 11, 2015)

Hi everyone,
Am I right in thinking AMH and Antra Follicle counts are not indicators of your ability to conceive naturally - i.e. if you have low AMH and/or not very many follicles, it doesn't necessarily mean you have a poor chance of conceiving naturally, it just means you might not respond well to ovarian stimulation?
Thanks,
Anna


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## AnnaC3 (Jun 11, 2015)

Just bumping this in the hope someone knows the answer...


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## Evie777 (May 7, 2015)

I'm not 100% sure lovely, but I think low AMH and not many follicles correlates to reduced fertility. 

X


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## Me Myself and I (Dec 30, 2012)

Low amh means fewer good quality eggs. A friend has very low amh 0.something and has got pregnant twice and mc. Think this is more common due to egg issues with lower amh.


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## Ali_123 (Mar 13, 2014)

Anna - from what I understand AMH is an indicator of how you might response to stimulation if doing IVF. I believe that it can be a rough indicator of quantity but not of quality. You can have high AMH and poor egg quality and low AMH and good egg quality. It's also a pretty new test and can change from month to month (even though it's meant to be more stable than FSH). 

I know of plenty of women who have been told they had low AMH for their age but had successful IVF's with plenty of eggs. I also know of women who have conceived naturally with low AMH. 

It also depends how low it is. When tested it seems like a lot of people get below optimal results…

Good luck! x


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## CrazyHorse (May 8, 2014)

There's no evidence that AMH is an indicator of egg quality, only of remaining egg quantity. However, because low AMH is much more common in older women, most women with low AMH will have egg quality issues due to age. Age is the strongest indicator of egg quality, and significantly elevated FSH (again, much more common in older women) is also an indicator of declining egg quality. Low AMH at younger ages has not been shown to be a signal of lower egg quality than normal for one's age, though. 

I'm less familiar with the impact of AMH and AFC on natural conception, but my understanding is that, while low AMH / AFC is associated with a reduced chance of natural conception (not sure how much of that is just due to the older age of most women with low AMH / AFC), it doesn't have as much impact on your chances of success with natural TTC as it does with IVF, if you are just looking at low AMH / AFC in the absence of other factors. With natural TTC, if you have regular cycles, you still have a good chance of producing an egg every month with low AMH / AFC, whereas conventional IVF approaches focus on maximising egg yield in a single cycle, and egg yields are usually lower with low AMH / AFC. HTH!


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