Mrs Nargund said yesterday that many clinics endanger the health of would-be mothers with high doses of hormones to stimulate egg production as well as steroids used to aid the implantation of embryos. She said: "This is the only area of medicine where drug dosages are not regulated, and that's wrong. We have recommended doses but they are not binding and some clinics are exceeding these levels."
More than 10,000 children are born each year using IVF treatments in which mothers are given drugs to stimulate their ovaries to produce a larger number of eggs. These hormones can cause ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which affects up to 6 per cent of patients. In August a woman died of the syndrome at the Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Mrs Nargund urges more research into the long-term health problems associated with IVF. "We have concerns regarding the risk of stimulating ovaries to produce more eggs," she said. "There may be consequences for a woman's reproductive organs in later life, in particular uterine cancer, and we urgently need to fund studies to test these suspicions.