Uterine health may be more important than egg quality...

An article just came out regarding a study where Texas Children's Hospital determined that uterine health may be more important than egg quality, with regard to birth weight and gestational maturity, for mothers who use IVF. Here is the link to the article: http://www.texaschildrens.org/allabout/news/2011/Uterine_health_IVF.aspx

Some of the highlights:

• The study explored several scenarios and found that the birth weight associated with standard IVF, where the mother is carrying and embryo created with her own egg, was higher than those with donor egg cycles, but less than that in gestational carrier cycles. 

• ...In standard IVF, an embryo is transferred to a woman who has just undergone controlled ovarian hyperstimulation, while using a gestational carrier IVF, the embryo is transferred to a “natural” or unstimulated uterus. Then, the researchers looked at IVF utilizing frozen embryo transfer in which an embryo created with a patient’s own egg is transferred to her own unstimulated uterus. In the cases where the uterus was unstimulated, they found the transfer cycles had markedly greater birth weights than those born as a result of standard IVF.

 

• The complete study, called “Toward understanding obstetrical outcome in advanced assisted reproduction: varying sperm, oocyte and uterine source and diagnosis,” can be found at Fertility and Sterility at www.fertstert.org.