If you’ve ever looked into getting fertility testing, you might be familiar with AMH. AMH, or anti-Müllerian hormone, is a hormone secreted by the ovarian follicles, so the higher your level, the more follicles (potential eggs) you’re expected to have. AMH testing is typically used as an indicator of your egg count.
But if you’re like many women, you might get the results of your AMH test and feel like, what now? It’s super important to look at that number in context, to understand whether it’s high or low (compared to the average) and what it really means for your chances of getting pregnant or the effectiveness of egg freezing or IVF.
First things first: let’s clear up any misconceptions about the AMH test being a “holy grail” fertility test. It’s not—it’s just one piece of data among the many that a doctor will use to gauge your fertility health. Your AMH level isn’t a test of whether or not you can get pregnant right now. First of all, your AMH level tells you only how many eggs you have left—and nothing about the quality (or genetic health) of those eggs, which is actually much more important when it comes to getting pregnant. There’s no test for egg quality, but it declines with age in a predictable way. Learn more about egg quality.
AMH levels can’t tell us if you have fibroids, uterine scarring, or another condition that might make it harder to conceive. An AMH test also can’t tell us how quickly your egg count is decreasing, since it’s just a snapshot of your levels at one specific point in time.
But, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. A particularly low AMH for your age can point to the possibility of early menopause, while an abnormally high AMH level may indicate polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormone imbalance that can make it harder to get pregnant. And in the world of egg freezing, AMH offers us one critical piece of information: how many eggs you’ll be likely to freeze in one cycle.
Many women want to understand whether their AMH levels are higher or lower than average. When it comes to AMH, what’s really “average”? Because AMH has only been routinely tested in women who visit a doctor after having difficulty conceiving, past averages have been based on a population that includes many women with fertility problems. In order to truly understand where your AMH level falls on the spectrum, you’ll need to compare it to a population of women without known fertility issues. We performed just such a study through the Center for Fertility Research & Education (CFRE).
In our research , presented at the ACOG Annual Meeting earlier this month, we looked at the results of over 2,600 AMH tests among non-infertile women who had come to Extend Fertility for a fertility assessment. As expected, AMH was negatively associated with age—meaning as age increased, AMH levels decreased, generally speaking.
Median AMH levels
