What Does an AMH Test Tell You About Fertility?

What anti-Müllerian hormone measures, why it predicts response to IVF but not your chance of conceiving naturally, what a large study found, and how to read a result.

By [Author name]November 4, 20262 min read

Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) is made by the small follicles in the ovaries, so its level in the blood reflects roughly how many follicles remain, often called ovarian reserve. That makes AMH useful for predicting how many eggs IVF stimulation might retrieve, and as a sign of approaching menopause. What it doesn’t do is predict whether you’ll get pregnant naturally: a low AMH is not a measure of your fertility now.

This article is general information, not medical advice. Fertility questions are best discussed with a doctor or fertility specialist.

What the Evidence Shows

Natural conception. In a study of 750 women aged 30 to 44 without known infertility, who had been trying to conceive for 3 months or less, Steiner and colleagues found that women with a low AMH (under 0.7 ng/mL) were no less likely to conceive within 6 or 12 cycles than women with normal values. A high follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) didn’t predict lower fertility either. The authors concluded the results don’t support using AMH or FSH to assess natural fertility in such women.
Fertility treatment. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s (ASRM) committee opinion on ovarian reserve testing (2020) describes AMH as a good predictor of the ovaries’ response to stimulation for IVF, and a poor one of whether a pregnancy will result. It advises against using AMH to screen women not seeking treatment, or as a test of fertility.

What Affects the Number

Factors that change AMH, which the ASRM opinion discusses, include:

Age. AMH falls steadily over the reproductive years, as the number of follicles declines.
Hormonal contraception can lower AMH while you’re using it.
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is often associated with high AMH, since there are many small follicles.
The laboratory. Assays differ, so compare results from the same lab and note its units: ng/mL or pmol/L (1 ng/mL is about 7.14 pmol/L).

How to Read a Result

Read it with the range your laboratory prints, and with a clinician who knows why it was ordered. A low value may mean IVF would retrieve fewer eggs, or that menopause may come earlier; it doesn’t mean you can’t conceive. A single value matters less than what you’re trying to decide.

Following It in Kaizora

Serum Anti-Müllerian Hormone is a lab result on Labs, logged with its time, the laboratory, and the range it printed, so a value outside the lab’s range is flagged. Like any lab analyte, it has no default reference range, since each lab prints its own; see What the Reference Range on Your Lab Results Actually Means.

The Short Version

AMH reflects the number of remaining ovarian follicles.
It predicts response to IVF stimulation, not the chance of natural conception.
In a study of 750 women, a low AMH didn’t lower the chance of conceiving within a year.

Sources

Steiner AZ et al., “Association between biomarkers of ovarian reserve and infertility among older women of reproductive age,” JAMA 318, no. 14 (2017): 1367–1376. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.14588
Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, “Testing and interpreting measures of ovarian reserve: a committee opinion,” Fertility and Sterility 114, no. 6 (2020): 1151–1157. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2020.09.134

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