Effect of ibuprophen administration before embryo transfer on IVF outcome: a randomized controlled trial

Abstract

To examine the effect of ibuprophen(Moment®) administration before embryo transfer on the pregnancy outcome of IVF-embryo transfer programs. Prospective, randomized, double-blinded placebo-controlled clinical study, conducted from september 2010 to january 2011. Patient(s): One hundred sixty-six consecutive cycles of fresh IVF-ET. The patients underwent IVF because of tubal, male infertility, unexplained, or endometriosis factors. They were randomly randomly divided into treatment and control group. Intervention(s): in the treatment group, 83 patients included in fresh ET cycles received an oral dose of 200mg of ibuprophen (10 drops).In the control group, the same number cycles corresponding to the treatment group were treated with placebo. Both groups started ibuprophen or placebo treatment 90minutes before embryo transfer. Patients and staff were blinded to the treatment. Main outcome measure(s): pregnancy rate and implantation rate. Ibuprophen increases significantly pregnancy rate 34.93 %) and implantation rate (15.10 %) compared to the control group(20.48 % and 9.60 % respectively; p<0.01). Moreover abortion rate was significantly reduced in the treatment group compared to the placebo group (13.79 % and 29.41 % respectively; p <0.001). To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the possible consequence of oral ibuprophen before embryo transfer for improving IVF-ET results. Our data indicate that ibuprophen improves IVF results and so may be an effective adjunctive treatment for IVF. Further studies are needed to clarify wether this effect is associated with the reduction of cyclooxygenase enzyme activity during embryo transfer or wether other mechanisms are involved.