Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH)

Check how many eggs you have left in your ovaries. This is called your "ovarian reserve." It's normal for your ovarian reserve to decrease with age. An AMH test can tell you the size of your ovarian reserve, but it can't tell you about the health of your eggs or predict whether you'll be able to get pregnant.

Predict how well you may respond to fertility medicine. Normally, your ovaries prepare one egg for fertilization each month. If you're using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have a baby, your health care provider will prescribe fertility medicine to make your ovaries prepare many eggs at the same time. The eggs are removed and mixed with sperm to make embryos outside of your body. Then the embryos are either frozen or put into the uterus to start a pregnancy. Testing your AMH level helps your provider know what dose of fertility medicine you may need to get the best response.

Find out if you're getting close to menopause or have already begun menopause. As you approach menopause your egg supply shrinks and AMH levels drop. AMH levels can be used to check for premature menopause (before age 40) and early menopause (before age 45). But an AMH test can't predict when you'll actually reach menopause. The average age of menopause is 52.

Help diagnose and monitor problems with the ovaries that cause high AMH levels, including polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder that can cause infertility, and certain types of ovarian cancer.

Check for healthy testicles in a male baby or child that may have undescended testicles. This is a condition where the testicles fail to move from the belly, where they develop before birth, into their proper place in the scrotum. Healthy testicles in a male baby produce AMH. So, normal AMH levels mean that the baby has healthy, working testicles, but they just haven't dropped into the scrotum. Little to no AMH is a sign of other conditions that need more testing.

Learn more about a baby born with genitals that aren't clearly male or female. This condition is called "atypical genitalia." In the past, it has been called "ambiguous genitalia" or "intersex." There are many types of atypical genitalia that have different causes. For example, problems with AMH and other hormones in a male baby can lead to the development of internal female reproductive organs and external genitals that don't look typical. An AMH test can show whether the baby has any working testicular tissue. This information can help diagnose the cause of the problem. The test is usually done with other tests, including chromosome testing, other hormone tests, and ultrasound scans to check for sex organs and glands inside the body.