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Saturday, September 25, 2021
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Fertility can be measured by the Embryo’s Squishiness

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"Fertility can be measured by the Embryo’s Squishiness"

New IVF technique can increase the odds of success by 50 percent.

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – A team of medical researchers from Stanford University has discovered a new way to measure the viability of egg cell based on their morphological properties. A patient’s fertility can be measured by the embryo’s squishiness, which is unanimously considered a far better prediction method than multiple egg cell implantation.

The Stanford research team learned that an egg cell’s viability can be predicted with a far greater accuracy by studying its mechanical properties. According to the their study entitled “Human oocyte developmental potential is predicted by their mechanical properties within hours after fertilization”, the doctors will now be able to predict foretell with greater accuracy if the an egg cell can transform into an embryo or not by studying its mechanical properties upon an hour after the fertilization process took place.

This new insight into the human fertilization could improve the rate of success of the IVF procedures, which currently use multiple artificially fertilized egg cells in order to boost the rate of success. The current IVF procedure involves a rigorous selection of fertilized egg cells. Only those with potential are selected in order to be implanted into the uterus.

Current IVF procedures dictate that multiple cells should be harvested from the patient. These cells are then injected with sperm cells and left alone for five to six days. Now, when the fertilized ovum reaches the 60-100 blastocyst phase, the doctors would take another look at them. This is a critical stage for the in vitro procedure.

The doctors must pay attention to the cell’s aspect and the rate of division. If the cells divide fast enough, then they are ready for implantation. Usually, doctors will implant multiple cells into the womb in order to increase the odds of fertility.

But, according to this new study performed by the Stanford University, it would seem that this process might, in fact, stress out the embryo. This, in turn, decreases the egg cell’s chance of turning into an embryo. Although the solution might seem sound enough, the doctors have determined that insemination with multiple fertilized ovum might lead to complication in both mother and child.

According to Livia Yanez, a bioengineering Ph.D. student and doctor Barry Behr, the director of Stanford’s in vitro lab, the odds of fertilization could be increased by over 50 percent if the scientists use the mechanical properties of the egg cell as a criterion for selection.

A team of bioengineers from Stanford determined that fertility can be predicted by the embryo’s squishiness. In lab mice, the scientists have discovered that the cell’s elasticity could play a key role in the procedure’s odds of success. And the true beauty of this technique lies in its simplicity. The doctors used only a pipette and egg cells harvested from a mouse.

Building a computer model with the data obtained from this test, the scientists have discovered that the model can actually predict the odds based only on the cell’s squishiness. If refined, this technique could help many mothers out there who suffer from infertility.

Photo credits:www.wikipedia.org

Fresh Eggs Have Higher Birth Rate Than Frozen Eggs

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Fresh Eggs Have Higher Birth Rate

A recent study revealed that fresh eggs have higher birth rate than frozen eggs in vitro fertilization. The study showed that even though there is a small difference, frozen eggs do tend to lead to fewer pregnancies than fresh eggs when used in vitro fertilization. Even though frozen eggs are quite effective in the process of fertilization, they have a lower birth rate probability than fresh eggs.

Scientists from the Center for Human Reproduction in New York gathered data from 380 fertility clinics inside the United States, where about 92 percent of all in vitro fertilization births occur. The research goes back to 2013, at the time the American Society for Reproduction Medicine announced that frozen donated eggs (oocyte cryopreservation) were no longer limited to experimental processes only.

Women who used fresh eggs in order to implant their embryos gave live births 47 percent of the times, while the women who implanted their embryos with frozen eggs gave births 43 percent of the time. Nevertheless, when the study took into account the number of embryos, the live birth rate was 56 percent for women who used fresh eggs and 47 percent for women that used frozen eggs.

There was also a tiny margin in the number of embryos that were transferred. Women who were using frozen eggs in the process of in vitro fertilization transferred around 1.6 embryos per cycle, when compared to 1.7 embryos for women who used fresh eggs in their fertilization.

The research data analyzed only the donor eggs, not women who chose to freeze their own eggs for future in vitro fertilization. The donors are screened in order to meet certain health qualifications, so the pregnancies differ for older women.

The researchers said that the reasons why there are lower live birth rates for women who use frozen eggs are still uncertain at the time. A possible explanation as to why this is might be the fact that there is a fewer opportunity for embryo selection because there are less oocytes, which may lead to less embryos available to be transferred. This could also be because the quality of oocytes might be affected by thawing and cryopreservation.

The recent study also wants to look into the fertility options for women who are older and how this could benefit in treating diseases at an older age.

Facebook and Apple have given their female workers the option to freeze their eggs in order to move forward in their careers. The cost of this procedure ranges from around $5,000 to about $8,000.

Image Source: bebelu.ro

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