Your chances for having a baby through in vitro fertilization may be boosted by harvesting fresh eggs instead of freezing them, or by harvesting during the earlier part of a menstrual period.
Two studies published in the same week presented the options.
In the first study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers said that using frozen eggs during an IVF cycle may lower the chances of fertilization compared to using fresh eggs.
The experts studied data from 11,148 donated eggs across 380 clinics in the United States. From these donations, 2,227 were frozen eggs.
The experts noted that live birth rate success from frozen eggs was at 43 percent, while fresh eggs was at 50 percent. Embryo transfer that led to live births were at 56 percent successful for fresh eggs and 47 percent for frozen eggs.
Many individuals choose to freeze their eggs to delay fertilization or perhaps donate the eggs to another couple in need. Frozen eggs undergo a quick-freeze verification process, which doesn't always guarantee fertilization, according to the researchers.
"If you start with 10 embryos rather than 5 embryos, you have a better chance of selecting the best embryo," said Vitaly A. Kushnir from the Center for Human Reproduction via Time Magazine. "But it could also be that freezing and thawing diminishes the quality of the egg."
In another study conducted at New York's Centre for Reproductive Medicine , researchers said that egg retrieval during the early stages of menstruation in older women would be able to boost odds of IVF success.
"We used to think that aging eggs were responsible for poor IVF success rates in older women, but here we show that it is more due to the aging of the egg's environment," said Yanguang Wu, an embryologist at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine in New York, according to Yahoo.
Experts studied 380 data from fertility centers and found out that women over 44-years-old have 1.3 percent chance of conceiving through IVF, while women between 38 to 39-years-old have a 23.6 percent chance.
The researchers said that such a big difference can be accounted to a woman's granulosa cells in the womb, which tends to be thinner in old age. The granulosa cells produce follicle-stimulating hormones that help with ovulation. Essentially, in more mature women, the fertility process in the uterus may be interrupted or delayed as a result of this scarcity.
During a cycle, doctors normally have to wait for the follicles in the womb to reach their fully developed size --- between 19 to 21mm --- before hormones from the IVF treatments are injected. This time, the team used a different approach by "ripening" the hormones earlier, even as the follicles were only 16mm in size.
As a result, they were able to harvest eggs that produced quality embryos, giving a higher rate for conception.
Their study was published in the Journal of Endocrinology.
