This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Frozen embryos effective for live births in infertile women with PCOS
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Compared with fresh embryos, women with polycystic ovary syndrome undergoing in vitro fertilization with frozen embryos may have safer and more successful pregnancies, recently published data show.
“Women with PCOS may have a higher chance of a successful pregnancy and may have less ovarian hyperstimulation when you electively freeze all the embryos and perform a frozen embryo transfer than if you do a fresh transfer,” Richard S. Legro, MD, of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Penn State College of Medicine, M.S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, said in a press release. “This protocol potentially offers immediate benefits to women with PCOS, so practitioners should consider freezing all embryos for these patients.”
Richard S. Legro
Legro, Zi-Jiang Chen, MD, PhD, of the Center for Reproductive Medicine, Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University in China, and colleagues evaluated infertile women with PCOS from numerous reproductive medical centers throughout China randomly assigned fresh embryos (n = 762) or frozen embryos (n = 746) during their first in vitro fertilization cycle. Live birth after the first embryo transfer was the primary outcome of the study.
Compared with the fresh embryo transfer, frozen embryo transfer resulted in a significantly higher frequency of live births (RR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.05-1.31), a higher frequency of singleton live births (RR = 1.2; 95% CI, 1.03-1.4), lower frequency of pregnancy loss (RR = 0.67; 95% CI, 0.54-0.83), lower incidence of moderate or severe ovarian hyperstimulation (RR = 0.19; 95% CI, 0.1-0.37) and higher incidence of preeclampsia (RR = 3.12; 95% CI, 1.26-7.73). Severe preeclampsia did not occur in either group. There were no incidents of still birth or neonatal deaths in the fresh embryo transfer group, whereas there were two stillbirths (P = .5) and five neonatal deaths (P = .06) in the frozen embryo transfer group.
“In a randomized trial involving infertile women with [PCOS], we found that frozen-embryo transfer resulted in the higher frequency of live births than fresh-embryo transfer, a difference that was attributed to a lower rate of pregnancy loss,” the researchers wrote. “Women in the frozen-embryo group also had a lower frequency of the ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome but a higher frequency of preeclampsia.” – by Amber Cox
Disclosure: Chen reports no relevant financial disclosures. Legro reports various financial ties with AstraZeneca, Bayer, Clarus Therapeutics, Euroscreen, Kindex, Sprout Pharmaceuticals and Takeda. Please see the full study for a list of all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts