Factors influencing the success of in vitro fertilization for alleviating human infertility

Abstract

The program for in vitro fertilization at Bourn Hall began in October 1980. Various types of infertility have been treated during this time using the natural menstrual cycle or stimulation of follicular growth with antiestrogens and gonadotrophins. Follicular growth and maturation are assayed by urinary estrogens and LH, monitored regularly during the later follicular stage. Many patients had an endogenous LH surge; others needed an injection of HCG to induce ovulation. All oocytes were recovered by laparoscopy. Wide variations occurred in the time interval between the start of the LH surge and oocyte recovery and between oocyte recovery and insemination. Embryos taken between the one- and the eight-cell stage were replaced into their mother, no standard procedure being adopted for all patients. The results of all treatments including patient's responses during the follicular and luteal phases, oocyte recovery, fertilization, cleavage, replacement, implantation, abortion, and birth and the effect of factors such as replacing two or more embryos, maternal age, and previous obstetric history are described in detail. The incidence of implantation after embryo replacement improved from 16.5% initially to 30% currently. More than 118 babies have been born, and many pregnancies are continuing.

Evaluation of in vitro fertilization parameters and estrogen receptor alpha gene polymorphisms for women with unexplained infertility

“…Since the first application of assited reproduction techniques, many factors have been associated with the outcome of IVF treatment [20]. Although all the patients were exposed to the same IVF protocol in follicular stimulation, follicular responses among the patients differed significantly.…”

“…A good quality oocyte is essential for maturation, fertilization and post-embryonic development. Edwards et al (1984) reported that fertilization rates were higher with mature oocytes and Tesarik et al (1995) found that addition of estradiol to human oocyte maturation medium increased the fertilization and cleavage rates of in-vitro matured oocytes [20,21].…”

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis of day 5 morphology grading and metabolomic Viability Score on predicting implantation outcome

“…An association between embryos' cleavage rate and morphologic characteristics, and their ability to implant has been reported soon after the first live birth using IVF, and development of controlled ovarian hyperstimulation protocols [3][4][5]. Since then, a multitude of morphologic parameters associated with increased viability of pronuclear, cleavage stage, and blastocyst stage embryos were identified, and numerous embryo grading systems have been developed [6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

An oocyte score for use in assisted reproduction

“…This is usually achieved either by the extended culture of human embryos to the blastocyst stage [5,6] or by the morphological analysis and selection of the highest quality embryos for transfer [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. More recently, the assessment of zygote quality has been applied [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32].…”