New IVF test triples chances of conceiving
Scientists have developed an IVF test that triples the chance of getting pregnant. American Chromosome Aneuploidy Screening has witnessed considerable amount of success rates and will be available in both private clinics and NHS within the next three years.
Doctors put chromosome abnormalities to test. Faulty chromosomes are discarded during the test and those having good chances of developing into a healthy fetus are implanted into the wombs. About 88 per cent of them have been reported to have given birth, more than treble the success rate of IVF in the past.
The test costs $3162 a time, on top of the normal price of IVF of around $6325. Further, as couples would take only one cycle. Compared to the earlier $18,978 test with three free cycles, couples would be saving thousands of dollars through the current system.
British scientists also developed a similar screening test last year; however it is not as highly developed as the current mechanism.
‘It’s technically challenging but if held up in future research it is something we’d clearly like to see introduced in helping to select the best embryos to be transferred,” Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society has been quoted as saying in the Daily Mail.
In previous IVF tests, doctors generally take up to 24 eggs from the woman’s ovaries to be fertilized with their partner’s sperm. Later they analyze shapes and sized of the eggs and pick the healthiest ones to be implanted. Experts feel this could be highly unreliable, as chances of picking faulty embryos are high. Further, a lot of IVF clinics implant two or three healthy embryos trying to boost chances of getting pregnant and couples end up having twins or triplets which might be more risky.
However, the new technique involves checking each of its 23 pairs of chromosomes and only one healthy embryo is implanted in the womb, thus leading to safer results.