BACKGROUND Comparative neonatal outcomes with respect to singleton births from blastocyst transfers or cleavage-state embryo transfers are controversial with respect to which method is superior. Many studies have yielded contradictory results. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis for the purpose of comparing neonatal outcomes in single births following IVF/ICSI. METHODS We searc...

Most experimental embryological studies performed on the early mouse embryo have led to the conclusion that there are no mosaically distributed developmental determinants in the zygote and early embryo (for example see [1-6]). It has been suggested recently that "the cleavage pattern of the early mouse embryo is not random and that the three-dimensional body plan is pre-patterned in the egg" (i...

BACKGROUND Both cleavage-stage and blastocyst-stage embryo transfer policies have advantages and drawbacks. The number of embryos transferred, however, is a crucial parameter that needs to be considered before attempting any comparison. METHODS An extensive literature search yielded initially 282 studies from which 8 randomized controlled trials met the inclusion criteria: (i) truly randomize...

We report an extensive scanning electron microscope (SEM) study of cleavage planes, cell shape changes, and cell lineages during cleavage of the asexual embryo of Volvox carteri f. nagariensis. Although our data generally confirm the basic description of cleavage developed by others using light microscopy, there is one important exception. We observed that the fourth cleavage plane is much more...

Background Sperm DNA fragmentation is known as an important cause of male infertility. The influence of sperm DNA damage on reproductive potential has been subject of many studies indicating various results and remaining the subject controversial. In this study, we investigated differences of the semen parameters and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) outcome according to sperm DNA fragmen...

background: fat-rich diet may alter oocyte development and maturation and embryonic development by inducing oxidative stress (os) in follicular environment. objective: to investigate the relationship between fat intake and oxidative stress with oocyte competence and embryo quality. materials and methods: in observational study follicular fluid was collected from 236 women undergoing assisted re...

the nutritional requirements of mammalian embryos changes throughout pre-implantation period, coincident with changes in the secretion of the female reproductive tract. therefore, it has been suggested that sequential culture media may support nutritional requirements for optimal growth of the mammalian embryos. in this study, we investigated the effect of two different concentrations (10 or 10...

the aim of the study was to compare the parthenogenetic activation and in vitro fertilization (ivf) of in vitro matured caprine oocytes. a total of 881 cumulus-oocyte complexes (coc’s) were collected from 243 ovaries. oocytes were matured in tcm-199 medium containing ecg (20 iu/ml), hcg (20 iuμg/ml), oestradiol-17β (1 μg/ml), bsa embryo tested (3 mg/ml) supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum ...

BACKGROUND Embryo quality may be accurately assessed as early as the pronuclear zygote phase, as shown in recent studies. However, it is not known whether good quality zygotes are destined to become good quality cleavage stage embryos and blastocysts. METHODS In this retrospective study, 86 intracytoplasmic sperm injection-embryo transfer cycles were studied where each available embryo was sc...