Progesterone test sticks to maximize the chances of conceiving: Interview with Sylvia Kang, CEO of Mira

view is a California-based medical device company specializing in technology that helps women maximize their chances of conceiving and monitor their reproductive health.

Fertility problems are on the rise, sperm counts drop, and many couples have difficulty getting pregnant. Technology can help maximize conception potential by allowing women to track their cycle and observe trends in hormone levels that can reveal problems or chances of conception.

This new device is a urine stick that detects pregnanediol glucuronide and confirms ovulation. The technology is easy to use and involves dipping the stick into a urine sample and then inserting it into a small egg-shaped analyzer. Shortly afterwards, the user can read the results on a smartphone app, where trends and data on hormone levels are displayed.

This information enables women to better understand their reproductive health and when they are most likely to become pregnant. Mira also offers two other hormone bars, Mira Fertility (which recognizes luteinizing hormone) and Mira Fertility Plus (luteinizing hormone + estrogen).

Medgadget had the opportunity to speak to Sylvia Kang, Co-Founder and CEO of Mira, about the technology to find out what it means for people wanting to have children.

Conn Hastings, Medgadget: Please give us an overview of the difficulties people face when trying to have children.

Sylvia Kang, Mira: About one in eight couples in the United States has infertility. That’s roughly 6.7 million people who struggle to get pregnant each year. CA one third of the cases are related to reproductive health problems in women.

Hormonal imbalances that lead to irregular or absent periods and ovulatory disorders are the most common causes of female infertility. Anomalies in the uterus and fallopian tubes can also cause difficulty conceiving. Some women have early menopause, which means their egg number and quality decrease too soon. Let’s also not forget the lifestyle and environmental factors that contribute enormously to our health and fertility.

The image of motherhood is also changing. Women become mothers later in life – a phenomenon associated with rising levels of educational attainment, rising labor force participation and delays in getting married. I myself am the example of deferred motherhood. Many of my friends are on a similar journey. Education and careers were our main focus, so we didn’t have the bandwidth to start a family at 20 – which is very common today. For some people, it becomes more difficult to get pregnant after 35 and more complications may arise. But the truth is, fertility doesn’t decrease in a day. Living a healthy lifestyle and monitoring your fertility are good things you can do to prepare yourself.

Medgadget: Are Fertility Problems Increasing? How do fertility problems affect people?

Sylvia Kang: Unfortunately, reproductive health problems are increasing in both men and women. When people hear fertility rates drop 1% per year, they don’t think it’s a big deal. But when you read that sperm counts have dropped 50 percent in just 40 years, you realize what a huge impact this is having on the lives of people around the world.

Many of Mira’s customers don’t know why they can’t get pregnant. They have been diagnosed with “unexplained infertility,” which means doctors are unable to pinpoint the problem or provide guidance. All of this leads to confusion and a sense of loss of control, which leads to stress. During each cycle, they encounter a negative pregnancy test and lack a clear direction as to what to do next. It’s very emotionally draining and stressful.

Medgadget: How Can Technology Help People Get Pregnant? Please give us a brief summary of Mira’s existing technologies and how they help with the conception.

Sylvia Kang: Women’s health technology is still an emerging industry, and there are many unmet needs here. There are some home tools available to help women track their cycle and ovulation, but there is a lack of platforms that offer truly holistic solutions with laboratory accuracy.

We created Mira with a mission to help people achieve their fertility goals without the guesswork.

Currently, the device tests levels of luteinizing hormone (LH), which is an indicator of ovulation, E3G, the estrogen metabolite, which is a key component in understanding reproductive health and the fertile window, and the urinary progesterone metabolite that confirms ovulation.

Mira’s future is more than just a fertility tracker, however – with all of the major female hormones on the panel, Mira will be able to track women’s overall reproductive health.

The Mira system consists of a small analyzer, urine test sticks and an accompanying mobile application. In contrast to other digital tools for tracking ovulation, Mira measures the exact concentration of the hormone level in the urine and provides easy-to-understand numerical values. The hormone data is synchronized with the Mira app, where users can see a long-term health trend.

Medgadget: Please give us an overview of your brand new PdG wand, what it measures, and how that fits in to maximize the chances of conceiving.

Sylvia Kang: Adding PdG sticks to the Mira test line was a great accomplishment as the test gives us crucial information about whether ovulation occurred during the cycle.

Non-ovulatory cycles are a very common cause of infertility and difficulty conceiving. Measuring pregnanediol glucuronide (PdG) in urine is the most effective way to determine if ovulation has occurred and if there is persistent luteinization for pregnancy. An increase in PdG on certain days after suspected ovulation is associated with a 92% chance of successful pregnancy, compared with a 19% chance for patients with lower PdG levels.

Mira enables continuous PdG tracking, learning a woman’s hormonal patterns over time, and helps make more accurate calculations to predict ovulation. The wand can be used alone or in combination with other wands to help women improve the chances of conceiving more quickly.