ESHRE-Review:
Complex ART Procedures More Likely To Lead To Umbilical Cord Abnormality
(cz) The more complex the assisted reproduction procedure, the more likely the umbilical cord develops in an atypical place or have other abnormalities, a scientist told the 23rd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (Wednesday 4 July). Mrs. Ilse Delbaere, from Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium, said that the study, including over 4000 twin pregnancies, was the first to examine umbilical cord abnormalities in such a large population.
For many years, scientists have known that both singletons and twins conceived after fertility treatment do worse in terms of duration of pregnancy and in live birth weight. “Certain umbilical cord pathologies, such as the insertion of the cord on the placental membranes instead of centrally in the placenta, or the absence of one artery in the cord, are known to correlate with an adverse outcome”, said Mrs Delbaere, “and we wanted to find out whether these cord anomalies were more frequent after assisted reproduction.”
The team studied data from the East Flanders Prospective Twin Survey (EFPTS), containing information on all multiple births in the region since 1964. “Since assisted reproduction was rather rare until the mid-eighties”, said Mrs. Delbaere, “we analysed twins born between 1985 and 2004.” The scientists compared cord characteristics from 2119 spontaneously conceived dizygotic (non-identical) twins and 2243 dizygotic twins who had been born as a result of assisted reproduction technologies (ART). Sub analyses looked at the different types of ART according to its ‘invasiveness’ and complexity. more…
From: »Science Daily«