IVF hope increased as new screening test doubles conception rate

October 19, 2009 by Baby Chums
Filed under: News, Pregnancy

The odds for IVF success are currenty less than one in four procedures and with around 37,000 woman in Britain every year undergoing IVF, this will be welcome news.

British scientists have developed a new method, which screens embryos for genetic defects and greatly increases the chance of women becoming pregnant, even in their late thirties. Genetic screening also substantially cuts the risk of conditions like Down’s syndrome.

To date more than 20 babies have been born after using the technique and the wishes of the scientists involved are that it could eventually become standard practice on the National Health Service.

One in six couples faces problems conceiving. However, with this new method, experts achieved a birth in four out of five attempts in older women whose previous IVF attempts had been unsuccessful.

“Astonishing”, was how the team, from Oxford, hailed their results. However they admitted they used the candidates most likely to succeed anyway for the treatment, (The method requires women to produce embryos which progressed to the five day stage).

Stuart Lavery, consultant gynaecologist at the IVF unit at Hammersmith Hospital, said the latest results were still ‘quite amazing when compared to conventional approaches’.

This technique, by the Reprogenetics UK laboratory in Oxford for the Colorado Centre for Reproductive Medicine, took 42 women with an average age of 39 who had endured at least one failed IVF attempt.

The experts tested five-day-old embryos for chromosome abnormalities which could prevent them implanting in the womb, or cause miscarriage.

More than twice as many embryos ended in a pregnancy using the technique compared to a control group of similar patients. In addition, multiple embryos were transferred at the same time.

Although some women miscarried, the birth rate was 80 per cent, compared to 60 per cent in the control group.

Allan Pacey, secretary of the British Fertility Society, said: “Embryology is really crying out for something like this.

“We really haven’t moved on from the science of just looking down the microscope and seeing if an embryo looks good on the basis of some rather loose criteria.

“This is very exciting technology but we do need proper randomised control trials to see if it does what says on tin.”

The screening technique is currently too new to be considered for funding by the NHS and is only offered privately in a handful of IVF clinics in Britain, costing up to £11,000.

The findings will be presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) conference in Atlanta this week.

The first baby was born in Britain using a similar technique last month, after his parents underwent 13 failed IVF attempts.