GDF9 IN DAY 3 EMBRYO CULTURE MEDIUM IS A STRONG PREDICTOR OF EMBRYO QUALITY

Abstract

To explore the whether the concentration of GDF9 in Day 3 culture medium can be used as non-invasive biomarker for predicting embryo quality. Prospective study. A total of 70 patients who obtained at least 2 transferable and 2 untransferable embryos with 6-12 blastomeres at Day 3 were enrolled into the present study. Four spent culture medium corresponding to the 2 good quality embryos and 2 bad quality embryos from each patient were collected. The concentration of GDF9 in embryo culture medium was quantified by ELISA. Statistical analyses defined correlations between GDF9 concentration and embryo quality. Good-quality embryos exhibited a significantly lower concentration of GDF9 compared with bad-quality embryos, suggesting that GDF9 in culture medium is an objective marker for embryo quality assessments. The GDF9 concentration in the medium increased with the increasing of embryo fragmentation. The receiver operating characteristic curve for good-quality embryos by GDF9 concentration in the culture medium had an area under the curve of 0.785, and using a threshold of 796.5 pg/ml, sensitivity and specificity values were 61.31 and 89.47 %, respectively. The determination of GDF9 concentration in the culture medium can be used to predict good-quality embryos.