Costly fertility treatment may reduce births

July 4, 2007

A costly fertility treatment designed to increase the chances of older women giving birth after IVF may actually reduce their chances of having a baby. . . .

Decreased Pregnancies

Twelve weeks after the treatment, 25% of the women in the PGS group were pregnant, compared with 37% of the women whose embryos were selected by the standard method – a visual inspection. The difference in outcomes was the similar when live births were considered. “The goal of PGS is to increase pregnancy rates, but we found that it actually decreases it,” says Mastenbroek, who presented the results at a meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon, France, on Wednesday. (New Scientist)