Transferring just one – rather than multiple – fertilized donor eggs doubles the chances of a healthy birth, according to a new study. Using IVF increases the odds of having twins or multiples, which in turn increases the likelihood that the babies will be born premature and underweight.
Many women choose to have multiple embryos transferred in IVF in order to save money and improve their chances of getting pregnant. But in light of the study’s findings, the authors urge women to use only one embryo.
The University of Colorado and Duke University study is the largest to date to look at outcomes of pregnancies using fresh and frozen donor eggs.
IVF - in vitro fertilization - has been around since the late 1970s, but with the advent of reliable cryogenic freezing technology, more and more women have been choosing to use cheaper frozen donor eggs, or even freezing their own.
In traditional IVF using fresh eggs, the donor egg is immediately fertilized with a semen sample and then inserted into the uterus of the hopeful mother. For the process to work, not only do donor, doctor, father and recipient have to move quickly, but the egg donor and recipient have to have their hormonal schedules synced up.
Frozen eggs can be cryogenically stored for up to 15 years, and are ready to be fertilized as soon as they have thawed. Egg-freezing is now a commercially available service, but using them for IVF was still an ‘experimental’ procedure up until 2013, says study co-author and Duke University medical director of reproductive technologies Dr Jennifer Eaton.
Women have even begun flocking to clinics to freeze their own eggs in order to focus on their careers while preserving their chances of having a healthy baby later in life.
Cryobanks, unsurprisingly have touted the practice as just as effective, and much affordable and simple than the use of live eggs. But, the practice is so new that there hasn’t been enough data to prove whether or not it works just as well as IVF with fresh eggs.
The Colorado and Duke study is the first comprehensive comparison of the two methods, comparing out comes for 30,000 patients who underwent IVF between 2012 and 2014.
‘We now know that using frozen bank eggs has no negative outcomes, as compared to using fresh eggs’, Dr Eaton says.
According to her study, fresh donor eggs are slightly more likely to successfully implant in the recipient’s uterus and result in a live birth, but the outcome is not ‘clinically significant.’
‘There are elevated risks for multiple births, and babies that are premature and have low birth rates for both forms of IVF, but especially for those who use fresh donor eggs. This ‘deserves more attention,’ the study authors write.
-dailymail.co.uk
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