Effect of women's age on embryo morphology, cleavage rate and competence-A multicenter cohort study

PLoS One. 2017 Apr 19;12(4):e0172456. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0172456. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

This multicenter cohort study on embryo assessment and outcome data from 11,744 IVF/ICSI cycles with 104,830 oocytes and 42,074 embryos, presents the effect of women's age on oocyte, zygote, embryo morphology and cleavage parameters, as well as cycle outcome measures corrected for confounding factors as center, partner's age and referral diagnosis. Cycle outcome data confirmed the well-known effect of women's age. Oocyte nuclear maturation and proportion of 2 pro-nuclear (2PN) zygotes were not affected by age, while a significant increase in 3PN zygotes was observed in both IVF and ICSI (p<0.0001) with increasing age. Maternal age had no effect on cleavage parameters or on the morphology of the embryo day 2 post insemination. Interestingly, initial hCG value after single embryo transfer followed by ongoing pregnancy was increased with age in both IVF (p = 0.007) and ICSI (p = 0.001) cycles. For the first time, we show that a woman's age does impose a significant footprint on early embryo morphological development (3PN). In addition, the developmentally competent embryos were associated with increased initial hCG values as the age of the women increased. Further studies are needed to elucidate, if this increase in initial hCG value with advancing maternal age is connected to the embryo or the uterus.

Publication types

  • Multicenter Study

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Age Factors
  • Chorionic Gonadotropin / blood
  • Cohort Studies
  • Embryo Transfer / methods
  • Embryo, Mammalian / anatomy & histology
  • Embryo, Mammalian / physiology*
  • Embryonic Development
  • Female
  • Fertilization in Vitro / statistics & numerical data*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Oocytes / cytology
  • Oocytes / physiology
  • Pregnancy
  • Pregnancy Rate
  • Zygote / cytology
  • Zygote / physiology

Substances

  • Chorionic Gonadotropin

Grants and funding

The study was supported with an unrestricted grant from MSD, Denmark. Cell Cura Solutions and Balleup IVF provided support in the form of salaries for authors MRJ (Cell Cura Solutions) and PL (Balleup IVF), but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the 'author contributions' section.