During Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) attempts, oocytes reaching metaphase II are microinjected. A morphological examination under a microscope is the usual method for determining oocyte maturity. The level of oocyte maturity is based on the meiotic status (Germinal Vesicle, metaphase I and metaphase II) of the oocytes with respect to their increasing maturity. In this paper, we summar...

The physiological trigger for meiotic resumption in the human oocyte is the surge of luteinizing hormone, but it can also occur spontaneously if oocytes are released from antral follicles and cultured in vitro. The development of novel techniques for the culture of murine oocytes has raised the possibility of growing human oocytes to maturity in vitro. Such a system could open the door to a num...

Recent findings In random-start protocols, the number of total and mature oocytes retrieved, oocyte maturity rate, mature oocyte yield and fertilization rates are similar to those in conventional (early follicular phase start) protocols. Starting ovarian stimulation in the late follicular or luteal phase did not show any superiority against the other. The presence of corpus luteum or luteal pha...

BACKGROUND Gene expression of cumulus cells (CC) could predict oocyte developmental quality. Knowledge of the genes involved in determining oocyte quality is scanty. The aim was to correlate clinical and biological characteristics during ovarian stimulation with the expression of 10 selected genes in CC. METHODS Sixty-three ICSI patients were stimulated with GnRH-agonist plus highly purified ...

background: human chorionic gonadotropin (hcg) has been used as a replacement for the mid-cycle luteinizing hormone (lh) surge for several years. the recent arrival of recombinant dna technology has made recombinant hcg (rhcg) accessible. objective: to assess efficacy of rhcg compared to urinary hcg (uhcg) for triggering of ovulation and induction of final oocyte maturation in assisted reproduc...

Previous studies relating hormone and cytokine concentrations in follicular fluid to oocyte fertilizability were flawed by the uncertainty about the actual oocyte maturity status at the time of recovery and by the possible contribution of the male factor to failures of conventional in-vitro fertilization. This is the first study in which oocyte maturity was assessed immediately after recovery a...

The cumulus-oocyte complex (COC) is an oocyte surrounded by specialized granulosa cells, called cumulus cells. cells surrounding the ensure healthy and embryo development. maturity of COCs at retrieval may be used as indicator to predict outcome assisted reproductive technology (ART). Segmenting a preliminary step in many image processing pipelines evaluate maturity. However, acquiring well-ann...

The reproductive features of the giant red shrimp, Aristaeomorpha foliacea, were investigated in the southern Tyrrhenian sea by experimental trawl sampling. The annual length-frequency distribution showed a multimodal trend in females, ranging between 16 and 67 mm carapace length (CL), and a unimodal trend in males (18-45 mm CL). Mature males occurred in different proportions all year round, wh...

Background: The aim of our study was to determine the metabolic profile: glucose, triglycerides (TG), high density lipoprotein (HDL) and cholesterol (CHT) in women undergoing ART (Assisted reproductive technology) cycles and estimate its effect on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) outcomes Materials and Methods: Forty three women undergoing IVF treatment were included in the study. Patients were all...