Through new egg screening method, which gynecologists hope will enhance the success rate of IVF and it can forecast hereditary problems in ninety percent cases. But European experts warned that it is yet not clear if it will increase the pregnancy rates. The new technology will be assessed further through a large study that will start next year.
Up to seventy-five percent of the eggs in women over the age of thirty-nine and up to half in young women are chromosomally anomalous. Fertility experts want a consistent method to find which eggs are hereditarily sound and try to enhance the chances of IVF success.
The egg screening method can be safer and more precise than other tests which search for hereditary problems in the cells taken from the emergent embryo, explained delegates at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) conference in Rome.
The egg screening method identifies problems by testing a spin-off the egg known as the polar body that contains a replica of the hereditary material in the egg. It allows experts to see if there are too many or too few chromosomes. In the latest study over two hundred eggs from forty-one couples has proven that it is a consistent method for identifying hereditary problems.
Now they are planning a large study over hundreds of women to see if it has the potential that has claimed. They said that they did have concerns about clinics offerings the method before it had been properly tested. It is hoped that it would improve pregnancy rates, explained Professor Joep Geraedts, who led the ESHRE taskforce on analyzing the test.
The pioneer of the test Professor Simon Fishel, managing director of Care Fertility, who has carried out this treatment in more than one hundred and fifty women, says his data shows that it doubles the chances of pregnancy.