Screening IVF embryos ‘can damage birth chances’
(sz) A technique for testing the health of an IVF embryo makes it less, rather than more, likely that a woman will have a successful pregnancy and birth, a study has found.
The test, which involves taking and analysing a single cell from an early embryo, appears to increase the risk of failed pregnancies or stillbirths, despite being a tool for detecting abnormal chromosomes.
Scientists who carried out the study warned yesterday that preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) should not be carried out routinely on older women who are trying to have a baby through IVF treatment.
They based their warning on a study of 408 women aged beween 35 and 41, half of whom were given PGS before their IVF embryos were implanted into the womb. The scientists then compared rates of pregnancies and live-births between the two groups.
“We found that, at 12 weeks, 25 per cent of the women in the PGS group were pregnant, whereas 37 per cent of the control group had an ongoing pregnancy,” said Sebastiaan Mastenbroek of the University of Amsterdam.
“And the women in the PGS group also had a significantly lower live-birth rate - 24 per cent, as opposed to 35 per cent, of the controls,” he said.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first to look at the effects of PGS on the pregnancies and births of a large group of women. It has not, however, explained why PGS should increase the risk of a failed pregnancy. more…
From: »The Independent« (UK)