Female Embryo: Number of Eggs Created

[Morlaf]

Hello.
I know girls are born with all the eggs they will ever "produce".
but at how many months old does the female embyo have the full complement of its eggs?

 

[Evo]

Do not get confused, even though girls are born with all of the eggs they will ever have doesn't mean that they are viable.

Female: At birth, a girl's pair of ovaries contain up to 1,000,000 follicles, which are hollow balls of cells, each with an immature egg (or ovum) in the center. A girl is born with all the eggs she will ever have.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/baby/fert_text.html

More information - http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/women-and-their-eggs-how-many-and-how-long\

And a new conflicting view that women can generate new eggs. I do not know if further studies have backed or debunked this.

Women may make new eggs throughout their reproductive years—challenging a longstanding tenet that females are born with finite supplies, a new study says. The discovery may also lead to new avenues for improving women's health and fertility.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...men-health-ovaries-eggs-reproduction-science/

 

[Morlaf]

so at 20 weeks then.
wikid and wild - thanks!
:-)

 

[ogg]

It would be more correct to say "BY Week 20". Evo's links say that at week 20 female embryos typically have 6 - 7 million ova, at birth ~1 million are left and 400,000 at menarche and only 400-500 are ovulated over a woman's reproductive years (with the rest disappearing (dying, being reabsorbed)). It makes no claim that Week 20 is the earliest that the ova exist, nor that 6-7 million are the most an embryo ever has. Also there is now research suggesting that it might be possible that some stem cells continue creating ova after birth, but this is on-going research, and only speculative.

 

[jim mcnamara]

@ogg Citations are always welcome when you post contraindicating facts...