World’s First Pregnancy announced for new IVF egg screening technique.

The British CARE fertility clinic in Nottingham has announced the world’s first pregnancy attributed to a new egg screening technique for in vitro fertilization. This method is believed to increase the success rate of in vitro fertilization without further invasive techniques and quicker than any current method.

Prior to this new technique, in vitro fertilization (IVF) had a low success rate, about 33 percent, often due to abnormalities of the chromosomes found within the egg to be fertilized. The new method used successfully by Dr. at the CARE clinic in Nottingham, array Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH), is a quick way to retrieve a copy of the DNA from the egg and analyze it without compromising the egg itself. Before fertilization, the array CGH technique employs a laser to cut the zona pellucida around the egg. Then a tiny pipette is used to suck out the small polar body on the outside of the egg. The chromosomes found in the polar body will mirror those inside the egg. This body is then analyzed to ensure that all of the chromosomes within the egg are normal and therefore less likely to cause a miscarriage, still birth, or other defects. This new technology also greatly decreases the amount of time taken to analyze the DNA. Within a day the women interested can have their potential eggs analyzed and implanted; an improvement of almost a week. This also increases the chances of a successful pregnancy.

The first successful pregnancy in the world from array CGH was in a 41yr old woman who had previously had 13 failed attempts at IVF and 3 miscarriages. More research is needed to see how this technique will affect current IVF success rates; however, this is an exciting step towards accurate and effective IVF.

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