Does Mitochondrial Transfer An Alternative to Egg Donation?

Abstract

Objective
 To evaluate the utility of pronuclear transfer using healthy oocytes from donors in poor prognosis patients.
 Design
 Retrospective study.
 Subjects
 A total of 29 patients with no blastocyst development or total fertilization failure were included.
 Main Outcome Measures
 Our primary outcome was the blastocyst rate. Secondary outcomes measures included euplody rate, clinical pregnacy rate and live birth rate.
 Results
 On day 5/6 of blastocyst development, an average blastocyst rate of 49.2% was obtained. The average rate of euploid blastocysts obtained after PGT-A was 69.5%. All patients underwent frozen embryo transfer. Single blastocyst transfer was performed in all patients, and the clinical pregnancy rate was 48.3%. Of these patients, 14 had a live birth, and the live birth rate was 48.3%. No genetic or morphologic abnormalities have been detected in the babies born. The 29 patients were grouped based on their age, as <35 (n=2), 35-27 (n=6), 38-40 (n=9), 41-42 (n=6) and >42 (n=6). Based on these age groups, blastocyst formation rates were 47.8%, 50.0%, 45.0%, 50.0% and 66.7%, respectively; euploidy rates were 63.6%, 61.1%, 66.7%, 100.0% and 83.3%, respectively; clinical pregnancy and live birth rates were 100.0%, 50.0%, 44.4%, 50.0% and 33.3%, respectively.
 Conclusions
 The results of this study show that pronuclear transfer can result in a high blastocyst formation rate, euploidy rate and live birth rate. This was shown among patients across all age groups, particularly in older patients who often show diminished IVF success rates.