Sydney: A leading fertility expert has said that a popular fertility test designed to tell woman how long she has left to fall pregnant is giving out inaccurate and misleading results, which is creating a wave of panic among women in their 30s and 40s.
Dr Anne Clarke, medical director of Fertility First in Sydney, said that a recent British study, plus anecdotal evidence, has revealed that the simple blood test, known as the Egg Timer Test, is unreliable and is becoming discredited worldwide.
She said that she has big concerns about its accuracy, adding that she's seeing a lot of women turning up at her clinic in an incredibly distressed state and highly depressed as they were told that the test showed that they there was no probability of them having a baby.
Adelaide clinic Repromed pioneered the Egg Timer Test, which costs about 70 dollars, to measure the number of eggs a woman has and predict how many child-bearing years she still has.
The Manchester study, which was published last year, found significant variations in the results - up to 60 percent.
Head researcher Dr Oybek Rustamov said that the research, which looked at the results of 5000 women between 2008 and 2011, found that Egg Timer Tests provided erroneous results.
