Researchers find new way to predict success of fertility treatment

The potential for the success of fertility treatment could be estimated by testing the follicular fluid that surrounds the egg in a woman's ovaries.

This is the finding of a study conducted by scientists at the University College Dublin's Conway Institute and published in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

It was suggested the probability of an embryo successfully leading to a pregnancy could be determined before it was transferred back into the womb during in vitro fertilisation.

This may reduce the need to implant more than one embryo, which increases the chance of multiple pregnancies and thus the likelihood of miscarriages and infants being born prematurely.

"Clear metabolic differences" were found between the follicular fluid of mothers-to-be and those who did not become pregnant, Dr Lorraine Brennan, who was involved in the study, reported.
Y A Wang and a team at Elsevier recently advised embryos frozen at an earlier stage of development than the blastocyst are less likely to result in spontaneous abortion.