Triplets or sequential siblings? A case report of three children born after one episode of in vitro fertilization.

To our knowledge, this is the first case report of three pregnancies resulting from the one batch of embryos. As the survival rate for cryopreserved embryos increases, there will be more families that will be able to be completed after just one cycle of hyperstimulation and oocyte collection, thereby making IVF-ET more cost-effective.

The effects of cooling human oocytes.

Preovulatory human oocytes were cooled to 0 degrees C at 1 degree C/min, with or without the cryoprotectant dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO), to assess the effects of cooling on the meiotic spindles and on oocyte structure. Batches of oocytes, cultured for 3-9 h, were held at 0 degrees C for 20 or 60 min and then fixed for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) either at 0 or 8 degrees C. Control oocytes were not cooled and were fixed at 22 or 37 degrees C for comparison.

Ultrarapid freezing of early cleavage stage human embryos and eight-cell mouse embryos.

Early cleavage stage human embryos and 8-cell mouse embryos were snap-frozen after a brief exposure to high concentrations of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO; 2 or 3.5 M) and 0.25 M sucrose and thawed in a warm water bath.

Successful pregnancy in an ovulating recipient following the transfer of two frozen-thawed embryos obtained from anonymously donated oocytes.

A fertile woman suffering from mild dystrophia myotonica had undergone sterilization because of the 50% genetic risk of this disease developing in her offspring. In her second treatment cycle on the donor oocyte program, four anonymously donated oocytes were inseminated with frozen-thawed sperm of her husband. Three embryos were obtained and two surviving embryos were deep-frozen at the eight-cell stage and kept in storage for 9 months.

Cryopreservation of human embryos: progress on the clinical use of the technique in human in vitro fertilization.

Embryo cryopreservation has been studied at Monash University since 1981 and has been available to patients since mid-1983. Of approximately 1200 patients' cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF), 445 have had excess embryos which they requested to be frozen. To date 205 patients have requested thawing of their embryos and 144 have had frozen-thawed embryos replaced in utero, resulting in 16 pregnancies.