Full screening for oocytes

Two women have given birth to IVF babies who benefited from a new kind of comprehensive genetic screening. Twin girls in Germany and a singleton boy in Italy were born healthy and are thriving. They are the first deliveries for the pilot study of comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) by microarray. This is a new method of screening for healthy oocytes for IVF.

Dr. Cristina Magli, embryologist at the SISMER Centre in Bologna, one of the two centres taking part in the trial, said, “All the babies and their mothers are doing very well in terms of weight and overall developmental performance.”

These first births, as well as several ongoing pregnancies, are the final stage in the “proof of principle” that successful screening of oocytes and embryos before transfer in IVF can take place. Success with this testing should lead to an increase in IVF birth rates and healthy babies since the screen is for a full range of chromosomal disorders. Both these pregnancies used oocytes whose complete chromosomal status had been assessed by CGH.

“We have learnt from more than 30 years of IVF that many of the embryos we transfer have chromosome abnormalities,” explains ESHRE’s chairman Luca Gianaroli. “Indeed, it’s still the case that two out of every three embryos we transfer fail to implant as a pregnancy, many of them because of these abnormalities. The whole world of IVF has been trying to find an effective way of screening for these abnormalities for more than a decade, but results so far have been disappointing with the technology available. Now we have a new technology in array CGH and our hopes are that this will finally provide a reliable means of assessing the chromosomal status of the embryos we transfer.”

We will need to wait for future deliveries and for status reports on these new babies, but so far this looks like promising testing which can help many infertile couples achieve their dreams.

Source: ESHRE, MedicalNewsToday