Editor's formulation: The frontiers of ovulation induction

The past 30 years have seen a profound increase in our ability to treat the most common cause of female infertility: absent or inadequate ovulation. The development of drugs such as clomiphene citrate and the isolation and clinical use of menopausal gonadotropins from human urine have enabled clinicians to directly address the hypothalamic, ovarian, and pituitary abnormalities that lead to the inability to conceive. The indications for the use of these agents have expanded as we have learned more about them. During the past 5 years, the development of new clinical agents and adjuncts to our ovulation induction armamentar ium has presented the clinician with both new opportunit ies and new challenges in women's health care. In addition, evolving basic science concepts in the control of the ovulatory process grow at a rate beyond the ability of any clinician to keep pace. It was for these reasons that we initiated a series of educational lectures in late 1992 to update clinicians and assisted reproductive technologies (ART) professionals around the country on the advances in hypothalamicpituitary-ovarian physiology and biochemistry and on the clinical advances and controversies that make up the "Frontiers in Ovulation Induction." The daylong sessions were met with considerable enthusiasm. After concluding a session in Los Angeles, several of the program participants decided simultaneously that a need existed to disseminate this valuable information to a wider audience than we could reach with a regional symposium. It was there that this supplement was born. The reviews by Drs. Greg Erickson and Doug Danforth represent the cutting edge of basic research into the micromechanisms of the follicle and the oocyte. The systems that they describe in this supplement not only add to our unders tanding of the ovulatory process but