Thursday, August 13, 2015

Human Eggs Best When Fresh, NOT Frozen - DAH!

Breaking new research has discovered that if a man and woman have sexual intercourse they are more likely to conceive a baby than if they have separate experiences with scientists.  (Well, that isn't exactly the study findings, but it's close.)
"The reasons for lower live birth rates with use of cryopreserved oocytes remain to be established."
-- Study authors
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:

Donor Eggs & IVF 'Creates' Life, Causes More Death

Frozen Embryo Custody Lawsuit to Set Precedent

Scientists Create Artificial Human Eggs and Sperm

Toddler to 'Own' 11 Future Children: An IVF Wonder

-- From "Study: Fresh eggs better than frozen for successful IVF" by Stephen Feller, UPI 8/11/15

Donated eggs frozen and used for in vitro fertilization lead to live births less often than those that have never been frozen, though researchers said the difference between the two is small.

Researchers at the Center for Human Reproduction in New York reviewed data from the 380 fertility centers in the United States, which are responsible for 92 percent of all IVF cycles. The research is from 2013, the first year the American Society for Reproductive Medicine said that oocyte cryopreservation, or freezing donated eggs, was no longer considered an experimental procedure.

Women whose implanted embryos used fresh eggs had live births 49.6 percent of the time, as compared with 43.2 percent of the women who used frozen eggs. When factoring the number of embryos women received, the live birth rate was 56.1 percent for fresh eggs and 47.1 percent for frozen eggs.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "In IVF, success rate for frozen donor eggs lags behind use of fresh eggs" by Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times 8/11/15

Researchers examined data from 380 fertility clinics that reported their successes and failures in 2013 to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. Those clinics represented 81% of all fertility clinics operating in the U.S. that year, and they performed 92% of all IVF cycles, the researchers wrote.

Though fertility clinics routinely freeze embryos, they began freezing eggs more recently. Only in 2013 did the American Society for Reproductive Medicine declare that egg-freezing no longer was “experimental,” according to the JAMA report.

Freezing eggs makes in vitro fertilization much more convenient for patients and doctors because the egg donor and the recipient don’t need to have their cycles synced. It also has the potential to make IVF less expensive because eggs retrieved from a single donor can be shared more easily among several women. “However, the added convenience and lower cycle costs must be balanced against the lower live birth rates with use of cryopreserved oocytes,” the study authors wrote.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "IVF Birth Rates Slightly Lower With Frozen Oocytes" by Tara Haelle, Medscape Medical News 8/11/15

The data raise more questions than the authors can answer, Edmond Confino, MD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, told Medscape Medical News. . . .

"Using eggs frozen by one center and thawed by another has potential negative impacts on success rates because of the use of different protocols," Tomer Singer, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told Medscape Medical News. . . .

A notable finding in the study is the high number of egg donation cycles (20%) that used frozen eggs, according to Richard J. Paulson, MD, chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles. "That is a high number and indicates that the use of frozen eggs for egg donation is clearly on the rise," Dr Paulson told Medscape Medical News. "It also substantiates the idea that in the future, frozen donor eggs banks are going to be used more commonly."

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Delaying motherhood by freezing eggs could harm birth chances" by Sarah Knapton, Science Editor, UK Telegraph 8/11/15

Many fertility experts now recommend cryopreservation for women who want to become mothers in later life, because younger eggs are known to be healthier.

Apple and Google even pay for their female employees to have the procedure, which normally costs between £3,500 and £5,000, so that they can forge ahead with their careers.

But a new study suggests that the freezing or thawing process may damage eggs and could reduce a women’s chance of becoming a mother.

Last year Dr Geeta Nargund, a fertility expert from the Create Fertility European Centre of Excellence suggested that egg freezing would become the new birthday present of choice for 30 year old women. The late Prof Carl Djerassi, who invented the Pill also told The Telegraph shortly before his death that contraception will become obsolete because women will choose to freeze their eggs while young and then be sterilised.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

From "Frozen Eggs Have A Lower Live Birth Rate Than Fresh Eggs, Study Says" by Charlotte Alter, Time Magazine 8/11/15

[The Center for Human Reproduction's Dr. Vitaly A.] Kushnir says the disparity in live birth rates could be partly explained by the fact that patients tend to start with a larger number of fresh eggs than frozen eggs, since donated frozen eggs are often packaged in smaller bundles. “If you start with 10 embryos rather than 5 embryos, you have a better chance of selecting the best embryo,” he says. “But it could also be that freezing and thawing diminishes the quality of the egg.”

He noted that while freezing eggs is no longer considered “experimental,” it’s still not a foolproof procedure, and emphasized that it tends to be easier to freeze embryos than eggs. “With an egg, its only one cell; it either makes it or it doesn’t,” he says.

Another important thing to note is that this study measured frozen eggs from egg donors, who tend to be much younger than women who electively freeze eggs for fertility preservation. Egg donors tend to be between 18-25 (the cutoff age for Egg Donor America, one egg donation center, is 29) while women who freeze their own eggs tend to be in their mid-late 30s. Since most doctors think egg quality can decline with age, women who freeze their own eggs might see even lower live birth rates than the donor eggs in this study.

To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.

Also read Teenage 'Boy' Harvests Eggs to be Mother & 'Father'