Promising Perinatal Outcome after Using a Simplified Low-Cost IVF Culture System Specifically Designed for Resource-Poor Countries.

Background: Assisted reproductive techniques services are often not accessible to the majority of infertile couples in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) due to high costs. Lowering IVF laboratory costs is a crucial step to make IVF affordable for a larger part of the world population. We developed a simplified culture system (SCS) which has proven to be effective, and the next step is to prove its safety.

Perinatal outcome of babies born after using a simplified IVF culture system versus ICSI with sibling oocytes: a prospective cohort study.

Research Question: Is there a difference in perinatal outcome in the same patient cohort for babies conceived following randomization of sibling oocytes allocated to a simplified IVF culture system (SCS) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) followed by conventional culturing?

Design: The study compared the perinatal outcomes of 367 babies born from 1 January 2013 until 31 December 2020 after using split SCS and ICSI insemination of sibling oocytes in a selected group of normo-responsive women, excluding cases of severe male infertility. Primary outcome measures were preterm birth (PTB; <37 weeks' gestation), low birthweight (LBW; <2.5 kg) and small for gestational age (SGA) as a primary outcome parameter while secondary outcome measures included mean birthweight, mean gestational age, extreme prematurity (<32 weeks), very low birthweight (<1.

Ganglioside-enriched microdomains define an oolemma that is functionally polarized with respect to fertilizability in the mouse.

The oolemma of the second metaphase mouse oocyte has a relatively large domain in the peri-polar body region that is non-permissive for sperm attachment. In this study, certain biochemical components of this non-permissive domain were examined and compared with permissive regions to investigate the molecular basis of an oolemma that becomes functionally polarized during fertilization; an attempt was also made to determine whether similarities exist in the formation of abnormally occurring non-permissive domains in human oocytes. In the present study, microdomains composed of lipid rafts enriched in the ganglioside GM1 provided a platform for sperm docking at the initial stage of fertilization and their disruption led to sperm attachment defects resembling those associated with fertilization failure in human IVF.