Freezing eggs leads to lower fertility rates, experts say – Press Examiner

The late Prof Carl Djerassi, who invented the Pill also told The Telegraph shortly before his death that contraception will become obsolete because women will choose to freeze their eggs while young and then be sterilised.

“Although not randomized or controlled, this study from America shows that although success rates using frozen eggs are still not as good as fresh eggs when used in IVF, they are rapidly improving”, stated Kingsland. The research goes back to 2013, at the time the American Society for Reproduction Medicine announced that frozen donated eggs (oocyte cryopreservation) were no longer limited to experimental processes only.

The researchers said that the clinics represented 81% of all the fertility clinics in the United States that particular year and they conducted 92% of all the IVF cycles.

The eggs that had been harvested applying this strategy had been less mature compared than those that had been extracted using the conventional method, but still they had given a higher number of quality embryos and higher rate of pregnancy in comparison to IVF technology. So in other words, the future can be blocked and frozen up to the moment when we decide to do something with it. Babies can wait in the essence of women’s eggs that are preserved and kept in refrigerators. Per embryo transfer, the live birth rates were 56 percent with fresh vs 47 percent with cryopreserved oocytes. These figures suggest that there are nine out of every 100 women who have had frozen eggs may not achieve live births. There are a lot of advantages boasted about the process of cryopreservation of eggs, such as convenience, which has reportedly become an important option for many women. Select donors are screened for health qualifications, so pregnancy rates will differ with women who are older. The ideal moment seldom happens in one’s life and ironically, most of the time we miss it. Speaking of the flawless moment, frozen eggs are not very efficient at guaranteeing pregnancy. “Alternatively, oocyte quality may be negatively affected by cryopreservation and thawing”.

Kushnir and the researchers also cautioned that, while all signs have been reassuring thus far, there has not been extensive research regarding long-term safety issues in children born from frozen eggs.

They emphasized that the figures apply only to donated eggs: “This study looked only at egg donation IVF cycles, NOT at cycles in women who freeze/use their own eggs”, said study lead author Dr. Vitaly A. Kushnir.

Based on data that IVF outcomes with cryopreserved and fresh donor oocytes are comparable, some IVF centers established frozen donor egg banks. However, the reason is still not clear to why frozen eggs resulted in fewer births. “Egg-freezing has only recently been widely adopted, and these results show how effective this approach can be for those needing donor eggs”, he said.