The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has developed a simple and cost-effective fertility testing kit for women. The urine-based diagnostic kits for measuring of four key reproductive hormones or their principal metabolites has been jointly developed by Drs M I Khatkhatay and Meena Desai of the National Institute of Research in Reproductive Health (NIRRH), an ICMR Institute based in Mumbai.

The complete set containing four measuring kits is a simple and cost effective technology based on enzyme linked immune-sorbent assay.

Senior officials in the ICMR said that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has already been signed on July 23 by both the representatives of ICMR and Hindustan Latex Life Care Ltd (HLL Life Care Ltd) for mass production, commercialization and marketing of the kit. According to Dr Abi Santosh Aprem, Deputy General Manager of HLL Life Care Ltd, the kit would become commercially available within 36 months in the market.

Dr V M Katoch, director general of ICMR and secretary, Department of Health Research, said that ‘it has been the our endeavour that fruits of public funded research should reach the public.’ The metabolites in the urine viz. such as estrogen glucuronide, pregnanediol glucuronide, follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone can be measured with the four kits.

The first kit can be used in monitoring ovulation induction therapy and also for in vitro fertilization programme i.e. in procedures of producing a test-tube baby whereas the second kit is used for the estimation of the metabolite for detection of occurrence of ovulation. The third kit is used to measure the evaluation of hypothalamic pituitary gonadal axis – a function of the endocrine organ situated deep in the brain that is responsible for the formation of the reproductive hormone whereas the last kit measures LH assay in conjunction with follies.