Between 1 and 4% of human oocytes fertilized in vitro are tripronuclear. It has been reported that these tripronuclear oocytes can develop to grossly normal-appearing morulae and that chromosomally, these embryos could be triploid, diploid, or severely depleted. The etiology and proportion of apparently diploid and aneuploid embryos deriving from tripronuclear human oocytes is unknown. This stu...

Background A decrease in aneuploidy rate following a prolonged co-culture of human blastocysts has been reported. As co-culture is not routinely used in assisted reproductive technology, the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of the prolonged single culture on the rate of diploid cells in human embryos with aneuploidies. MaterialsAndMethods In this cohort study, we used fluorescence in ...

introduction: to improve the development of embryo in vitro several attempts have been made, including the application of leukemia inhibitory factor (lif). this factor plays an important role in embryo development and has been shown to enhance in vitro development rate in sheep and mice. there is controversy regarding the effect of lif on the different stages of embryo development. the aim of t...

Despite efforts made to improve the in vitro embryo culture conditions used during assisted reproduction procedures, human embryos must adapt to different in vitro oxygen concentrations and the new metabolic milieu provided by the diverse culture media used for such protocols. It has been shown that the embryo culture environment can affect not only cellular metabolism, but also gene expression...

One strategy for arguing that it should be legally permissible to create human embryos, or to use spare human embryos, for scientific research purposes involves the claim that such embryos cannot be persons because they are not human individuals while twinning may yet take place. Being a human individual is considered to be by most people a necessary condition for being a human person. I argue ...

BACKGROUND Ethylene glycol (EG) has been successfully used as a cryoprotectant for vitrification of mammalian formula embryos (including human embryos) due to its low formula weight and high permeation into cells compared with other cryoprotectants, including propylene glycol (PROH). This study was carried out to evaluate the permeation and toxicity of EG and to investigate the effects of its u...

Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) represent the best chance for infertile couples to conceive, although increased risks for morbidities exist, including imprinting disorders. This increased risk could arise from ARTs disrupting genomic imprints during gametogenesis or preimplantation. The few studies examining ART effects on genomic imprinting primarily assessed poor quality human embry...

BACKGROUND Although chromosomal mosaicism in human preimplantation embryos has been described for almost two decades, its exact prevalence is still unknown. The prevalence of mosaicism is important in the context of preimplantation genetic screening in which the chromosomal status of an embryo is determined by the analysis of a single cell from that embryo. METHODS Here we report a systematic...

BACKGROUND The NLRP (Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain, Leucine rich Repeat and Pyrin domain containing) family, also referred to as NALP family, is well known for its roles in apoptosis and inflammation. Several NLRPs have been indicated as being involved in reproduction as well. METHODOLOGY We studied, using the unique human gametes and embryo materials, the expression of the NLRP f...

PURPOSE To evaluate the epigenetic risk linked to assisted reproductive technology (ART) at single-embryo level by analyzing the methylation status of imprinted H19, PEG1, and KvDMR1 in human preimplantation embryos. METHODS A total of 254 human day 3 embryos produced by ART procedures were collected. All embryos were normally fertilized but unsuitable for transfer or freezing due to poor qua...