Improving The Odds For IVF

By Christine Gorman

For couples considering in vitro fertilization (IVF), the high cost of repeated attempts and the chance of having multiple babies are often cause for hesitation. But new research at the Sher Institutes of Reproductive Medicine suggests that there could soon be a test to identify which embryos are most likely to be successfully implanted. Such a test would reduce the number of tries needed to achieve pregnancy and allow doctors to implant fewer embryos, lowering the odds of having quadruplets or triplets. Sher doctors found that embryos that produce a high level of the genetic marker sHLA-G gave women a better than 60% pregnancy success rate--nearly double the current national average for IVF. The marker can be easily detected in the fluid surrounding each embryo.