Therapeutic endometrial scratching and implantation after in vitro fertilization: a multicenter randomized controlled trial.

Objective: To study whether endometrial scratching in the luteal phase before ovarian stimulation increases clinical pregnancy rates in women with one or more previous implantation failures.

Design: A nonblinded multicenter randomized clinical trial.

Setting: Fertility clinics.

Diagnostic Accuracy of a Point-of-Care Test for Celiac Disease Antibody Screening among Infertile Patients.

Background: Screening for celiac disease among infertile patients has been suggested. Several rapid point-of-care (POC) tests aimed at detecting celiac disease antibodies have been developed. It has been suggested that these POC tests can be implemented as a replacement for standard laboratory tests.

Unrecognised coeliac disease among men and women undergoing fertility treatment: A screening study.

Background: Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disease triggered by dietary gluten and has been associated with several conditions influencing female and male reproduction. Due to unspecific symptoms, coeliac disease can be unrecognised for years.

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of unrecognised coeliac disease among couples referred to fertility treatment.

Reproductive life in women with celiac disease; a nationwide, population-based matched cohort study.

Study Question: How does celiac disease (CD) influence women's reproductive life, both prior to and after the diagnosis?

Summary Answer: Prior to the diagnosis of CD, an increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes was seen, whereas after the diagnosis, no influence on reproductive outcomes was found.

What Is Known Already: CD has been associated with several conditions influencing female reproduction and pregnancy outcomes including spontaneous abortion and stillbirth.

Study Design, Size, Duration: A nationwide matched cohort study following 6319 women diagnosed with CD and 63166 comparison women and identifying reproductive events between the ages of 15 and 50 years.

Biological age of the endometrium using DNA methylation.

Age has a detrimental effect on reproduction and as an increasing number of women postpone motherhood, it is imperative to assess biological age in terms of fertility prognosis and optimizing fertility treatment individually. Horvath's epigenetic clock is a mathematical algorithm that calculates the biological age of human cells, tissues or organs based on DNA methylation levels. The clock, however, was previously shown to be highly inaccurate for the human endometrium, most likely because of the hormonal responsive nature of this tissue.

Prevalence, incidence, and autoimmune comorbidities of celiac disease: a nation-wide, population-based study in Denmark from 1977 to 2016.

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe and identify potential trends with respect to prevalence, incidence, age, sex, and autoimmune comorbidity of celiac disease (CD).

Patients And Methods: A Danish nationwide cohort study of CD using data from The National Patient Register. Patients with a primary or secondary diagnosis code of CD during the period 1977 to 2016 were identified.

Effect of women's age on embryo morphology, cleavage rate and competence-A multicenter cohort study.

This multicenter cohort study on embryo assessment and outcome data from 11,744 IVF/ICSI cycles with 104,830 oocytes and 42,074 embryos, presents the effect of women's age on oocyte, zygote, embryo morphology and cleavage parameters, as well as cycle outcome measures corrected for confounding factors as center, partner's age and referral diagnosis. Cycle outcome data confirmed the well-known effect of women's age. Oocyte nuclear maturation and proportion of 2 pro-nuclear (2PN) zygotes were not affected by age, while a significant increase in 3PN zygotes was observed in both IVF and ICSI (p<0.

Microarray-Based Analysis of Methylation of 1st Trimester Trisomic Placentas from Down Syndrome, Edwards Syndrome and Patau Syndrome.

Methylation-based non-invasive prenatal testing of fetal aneuploidies is an alternative method that could possibly improve fetal aneuploidy diagnosis, especially for trisomy 13(T13) and trisomy 18(T18). Our aim was to study the methylation landscape in placenta DNA from trisomy 13, 18 and 21 pregnancies in an attempt to find trisomy-specific methylation differences better suited for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. We have conducted high-resolution methylation specific bead chip microarray analyses assessing more than 450,000 CpGs analyzing placentas from 12 T21 pregnancies, 12 T18 pregnancies and 6 T13 pregnancies.

Microarray-Based Analysis of Methylation Status of CpGs in Placental DNA and Maternal Blood DNA--Potential New Epigenetic Biomarkers for Cell Free Fetal DNA-Based Diagnosis.

Epigenetic markers for cell free fetal DNA in the maternal blood circulation are highly interesting in the field of non-invasive prenatal testing since such markers will offer a possibility to quantify the amount of fetal DNA derived from different chromosomes in a maternal blood sample. The aim of the present study was to define new fetal specific epigenetic markers present in placental DNA that can be utilized in non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. We have conducted a high-resolution methylation specific beadchip microarray study assessing more than 450.

The parental origin correlates with the karyotype of human embryos developing from tripronuclear zygotes.

Objective: It has previously been suggested that embryos developing from intracytoplasmic sperm-injected (ICSI) zygotes with three pronuclei (3PN) are endowed with a mechanism for self-correction of triploidy to diploidy. 3PN are also observed in zygotes after conventional in vitro fertilization (IVF). The parental origin, however, differs between the two fertilization methods.

Proposed guidelines on the nomenclature and annotation of dynamic human embryo monitoring by a time-lapse user group.

Study Question: Can the approach to, and terminology for, time-lapse monitoring of preimplantation embryo development be uniformly defined in order to improve the utilization and impact of this novel technology?

Summary Answer: The adoption of the proposed guidelines for defining annotation practice and universal nomenclature would help unify time-lapse monitoring practice, allow validation of published embryo selection algorithms and facilitate progress in this field.

What Is Known Already: An increasing quantity of publications and communications relating to time-lapse imaging of in vitro embryo development have demonstrated the added clinical value of morphokinetic data for embryo selection. Several articles have identified similar embryo selection or de-selection variables but have termed them differently.

Limitations of a time-lapse blastocyst prediction model: a large multicentre outcome analysis.

The goal of embryo selection models is to select embryos with the highest reproductive potential, whilst minimizing the rejection of viable embryos. Ultimately, any embryo selection model must be tested on clinical outcome. We therefore retrospectively tested a published blastocyst prediction model on a large combined set of transferred embryos with known clinical outcome.

Triploid pregnancies: genetic and clinical features of 158 cases.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyze the correlation between the genetic constitution and the phenotype in triploid pregnancies.

Study Design: One hundred fifty-eight triploid pregnancies were identified in hospitals in Western Denmark from April 1986 to April 2010. Clinical data and karyotypes were collected retrospectively, and archived samples were retrieved.

Altered cleavage patterns in human tripronuclear embryos and their association to fertilization method: a time-lapse study.

Purpose: To analyze the cleavage patterns in dipronuclear (2PN) and tripronuclear (3PN) embryos in relation to fertilization method.

Method: Time-lapse analysis.

Results: Compared to 2PN, more 3PN IVF embryos displayed early cleavage into 3 cells (p < 0.

Methylation-specific multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification: utility for prenatal diagnosis of parental origin in human triploidy.

Objective: When a triploid pregnancy is diagnosed prenatally, gynaecologists have traditionally relied on the histopathological examination of the tissue from the terminated pregnancy to determine if the pregnancy is molar. However, reproducibility is poor and variability is high when diagnosing hydatidiform moles. Triploid pregnancies can have either the chromosomal constitution of two maternal and one paternal set, or two paternal and one maternal set, but only the conceptuses with two paternal sets have the potential to cause maternal complications.

A randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effect of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) in embryo culture medium for in vitro fertilization.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) in embryo culture medium on ongoing implantation rate (OIR).

Design: Multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded prospective design.

Setting: Fourteen Scandinavian fertility clinics.

Limited implantation success of direct-cleaved human zygotes: a time-lapse study.

Objective: To evaluate embryos with direct cleavage (≤5 hours) from two to three cells (DC2-3) and correlate this morphokinetic parameter to implantation and ongoing pregnancy.

Design: Clinical multicenter retrospective study.

Setting: Private in vitro fertilization (IVF) centers.

Time-lapse monitoring as a tool for clinical embryo assessment.

As elective transfer of a single embryo (eSET) becomes increasingly accepted, the need to improve implantation rates becomes crucial. Selecting the most competent embryo therefore constitutes a major challenge in assisted reproductive technology. Embryo morphology and developmental stage at given time points are closely correlated with developmental competence and assessment of morphological parameters at discrete inspection points thus remains the preferred way of evaluating embryonic potential.

Microselection--affinity selecting antibodies against a single rare cell in a heterogeneous population.

Rare cells not normally present in the peripheral bloodstream, such as circulating tumour cells, have potential applications for development of non-invasive methods for diagnostics or follow up. Obtaining these cells however require some means of discrimination, achievable by cell type specific antibodies. Here we have generated a microselection method allowing antibody selection, by phage display, targeting a single cell in a heterogeneous population.

Culture of human oocytes with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor has no effect on embryonic chromosomal constitution.

The effect on ploidy rate in donated human oocytes after in-vitro culture with recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF; 2 ng/ml) from fertilization until day 3 was examined in a multicentre, prospective placebo-controlled and double-blinded study including 73 women donating 86 oocytes. The primary endpoint was to investigate the chromosomal constitution of human embryos (fluorescence in-situ hybridization analysis for chromosomes 13, 16, 18, 21, 22, X and Y) cultured with or without GM-CSF. The secondary endpoints were number of top-quality embryos (TQE) and number of normally developed embryos evaluated morphologically on day 3.

Kinetic markers of human embryo quality using time-lapse recordings of IVF/ICSI-fertilized oocytes.

A time-lapse system was used to study the timing and coordination of events during early development from zygote to cleavage stage embryo. The aim was to identify markers linked to good-quality embryos and implantation. A total of 102 fertilized oocytes were followed for 20-24 h.

Nuclei size in relation to nuclear status and aneuploidy rate for 13 chromosomes in donated four cells embryos.

Purpose: The aim was to elucidate if the nuclear size and number are indicative of aberrant chromosome content in human blastomeres and embryos.

Methods: The number of nuclei and the nucleus and blastomere size were measured by a computer controlled system for multilevel analysis. Then the nuclei were enumerated for 13 chromosomes by a combination of PNA and DNA probes.

Resumption of mitosis in frozen-thawed embryos is not related to the chromosomal constitution.

Objective: To study the relation between the resumption of mitosis after thaw and chromosomal constitution in frozen-thawed embryos. In addition, to evaluate the correlation among the three parameters of resumption of mitosis after thaw, postthaw blastomere loss, and multinucleation.

Design: Frozen-thawed embryos were morphologically evaluated at thaw and after 24 hours of culture.

Parameters predicting the implantation rate of thawed IVF/ICSI embryos: a retrospective study.

Single embryo transfer is becoming increasingly popular in IVF/ICSI. More IVF/ICSI cycles therefore include freezing of high quality embryos, and the cumulative effect of such cycles becomes more important. To improve the results obtained using frozen-thawed embryos, the predictive value of embryo and patient characteristics was analysed retrospectively.