New IVF screening technique doubles success rate
A new technique that rapidly screens for genetic abnormalities in IVF embryos has borne fruit. A 41-year old woman in the UK is pregnant using this technique after going through 13 unsuccessful IVF cycles, according to Nature News.
The array comparative genomic hybridization can now screen rapidly eggs which are not deemed viable due to chromosomal aberrations and other genetic abnormalities.
In the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF), several embryos are produced in a dish. However, many of these embryos are not viable because of genetic abnormalities coming from the eggs. That is why the success rate of IVF is low. To compensate for this uncertainty, multiple embryos are implanted and many others are frozen as “reserve” embryos for another IVF cycle in case the current cycle is not successful.
The new technique offers the following advantages:
- Only viable embryos need be implanted.
- Only embryos which are viable need to be frozen, thus reducing the number of left over embryos and the problem of disposition.
- It lessens the necessity of implanting multiple embryos and thus the likelihood of having multiples.
- The success rate of IVF is doubled.
Using this new technique, 2 out of 8 eggs removed from the pregnant woman proved to be chromosomally complete while the other 6 were not. These two were fertilized and implanted. One embryo successfully survived and the baby is due in spring.
Interesting, the viable eggs were not the best looking of the lot, thus casting doubt on the current practice of manually screening eggs under the microscope based on their appearance. The new DNA screening technique takes 1-2 days to complete.
It seems that the UK is far ahead in IVF technology. The first IVF baby was born in Britain 30 years ago. Just last week, the first IVF baby preselected as breast cancer-free was born, also in the UK.
Read More
One Response to “New IVF screening technique doubles success rate”
Trackbacks