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Time to Conceive looked at 750 women aged between 30 and 44 who were living with a male partner not known to be infertile, had no diagnosis of infertility of their own, and had recently started trying to become pregnant.
“懷孕時間”研究調查了750名年齡在30歲到44歲之間的女性，這些女性都分別與一名沒有被診斷為不孕不育的男性伴侶生活在一起，并且最近開始嘗試懷孕。
The team took blood and urine samples from these volunteers and measured levels of three hormones often examined by fertility tests.
研究小組從這些志愿者身上采集了血液和尿液樣本，并檢測了生育測試中經常檢查的三種荷爾蒙的水平。
They then followed each volunteer for a year.
然后，他們對所有志愿者進行了一年的跟蹤調查。
The upshot, published in 2017, was that hormone levels were uncorrelated with pregnancy within the 12-month window through which the researchers were looking.
2017年發表的研究結果是，在研究人員觀察的12個月時間內，荷爾蒙水平與是否懷孕無關。
But perhaps, Dr. Steiner subsequently speculated, that window was too narrow.
但斯坦納博士隨后推測，也許這個時間太短了。
In 2020 she therefore got back in touch with the original participants for a follow-up.
因此，在2020年，她與最初的研究對象重新取得了聯系，以便進行后續調查。
She asked them if they would fill out a questionnaire about how many children they had had, how long it had taken to get pregnant and whether they had been diagnosed with infertility.
她詢問對方是否愿意填寫一份調查問卷，內容包括他們有幾個孩子，懷孕用了多長時間，以及他們是否被診斷為不孕不育。
Some 336 of them agreed to participate.
約336人同意填寫問卷。
Among these there had been 239 pregnancies, resulting in 225 live births.
其中有239人懷孕，225例為活產。
More sadly, 73 participants were infertile.
悲傷的是，73名研究對象不育。
But the hormone levels in the tests carried out in the original study did not predict these outcomes.
但在最初的研究中，測試的荷爾蒙水平并沒能預測這些結果。
There was no difference, the researchers found, between women with poor results and those with normal ones.
研究人員發現，不育的女性和最終生育的女性荷爾蒙水平沒有區別。
In the case of one substance, for example - anti-Mullerian hormone, which is thought predictive because it is produced by cells in the egg-bearing follicles of the ovaries, and is thus believed to reflect the number of those follicles - 79% of those with low levels of it went on to give birth.
舉一個例子，抗繆勒管激素被認為能夠預測生育能力，因為它是由卵巢中有卵子的卵泡中的細胞產生的，因此人們認為它能夠反映有卵子的卵泡的數量，而79%抗繆勒管激素低的人能夠生育。
That was statistically indistinguishable from the 71% of mothers with normal levels.
荷爾蒙水平正常的女性71%能夠生育，這兩個數據在統計上相一致。
The decline in fertility, says Dr. Steiner, is thus clearly not related to the decline in the quantity of eggs, but presumably to their quality.
因此，斯坦納博士說，生育能力的降低顯然與卵子數量的減少無關，而可能與它們的質量有關。
And how to measure that remains unknown.
但如何檢測卵子的質量仍是個未知數。
