Infertility among women is a common problem in the U.S., with about 6.1 million women experiencing difficulty becoming or staying pregnant, according to New Mexico State University (NMSU), pointing to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

Infertility affects not just people but is a problem most mammals experience as well. In the NMSU College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences, department of animal and range sciences associate professor Jennifer Hernandez Gifford is leading research to understand the mechanisms involved in normal estrogen production and how they can help address problems that arise from abnormal estrogen concentrations, which lead to infertility.

Specifically, Hernandez Gifford investigates signaling pathways that regulate ovarian function and steroid production in livestock, an announcement from the university said.

“For humans as well as livestock, estrogen is required for female fertility. Our lab has a long-vested interest in ovarian biology and estrogen production. Some of our work has been to identify novel signaling pathways that regulate estrogen production,” Hernandez Gifford explained. "This has led us into a new research area in which we are evaluating the oocyte, or egg, that has the potential to be ovulated and become fertilized.”

Hernandez Gifford said infertility research is important for both women trying to conceive and ranchers raising livestock.

For agricultural purposes, “we know that we need to have optimal reproductive efficiency in an effort to provide food for the continually growing population,” Hernandez Gifford said.

Some of Hernandez Gifford’s findings include the identification of hormones from the pituitary gland converging with signaling molecules in the ovary to inhibit estrogen production.

“We are currently investigating the mechanisms by which this occurs,” Hernandez Gifford said. “It is our thought that this complex interaction may be necessary to keep ovarian follicles developing at the appropriate rate to allow maximal fertility.”

She added that ovarian follicle development is a tightly coordinated event that relies on multiple hormones and intersecting pathways.

“While many follicles will develop throughout a regular cycle, typically only one will be selected to mature to dominance and ultimately be ovulated,” Hernandez Gifford said. “There are still a lot of unknowns about how a single follicle is determined to be selected and ovulated.”