Freezing eggs risky for mothers

The success rate with fresh eggs was nearly 50 percent, compared with 43 percent when using frozen eggs, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

There is a rising use of frozen eggs, which are much more convenient and easier to have in stock than fresh eggs, and some IVF centers have even established donor egg banks dedicated to frozen eggs, according to a CBS News report. The research goes back to 2013, at the time the American Society for Reproduction Medicine announced that frozen donated eggs (oocyte cryopreservation) were no longer limited to experimental processes only.

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.

During the study, the researchers came to know that women had a 56% chance of giving birth when IVF involved the use of fresh eggs. The created embryos may be transferred into the uterus instantly or frozen (cryopreserved) to be used at a later date.

They emphasized that the figures apply only to donated eggs: “This study looked only at egg donation IVF cycles, NOT at cycles in women who freeze/use their own eggs”, said study lead author Dr. Vitaly A. Kushnir.

He and his colleagues were skeptical that pregnancy rates with the frozen donor eggs could be as high as the fresh donors.

On the other hand, study authors admitted that the findings may not be entirely accurate because they weren’t adjusted for age since that piece of information on women was confidential.

She also pointed to the results of 2011 study conducted in Cyprus, which suggested that under careful treatment frozen eggs work just as well as fresh. Equality of chances has made women focus more on their careers rather than family life, which makes them compromise at a certain level and have their eggs harvested for “the flawless moment”.

Egg freezing sparked some controversy last year as both Apple and Facebook announced they would cover egg freezing as part of their employee benefits. (The idea of freezing sperm goes back to the 1880s, and women have been using it to get pregnant since 1953, according to this fascinating history of the technology from the California Cryobank.). The latter has become increasingly more the case, as there are many gaps between the moment in which a patients wants to receive a transplant, and the availability of fresh organs.

Typically a frozen donor receives about five or six eggs, whereas a fresh one receives more than 15.

The success rates of in vitro fertilization (IVF) are contingent upon a few different things, but perhaps mostly on a woman’s age.

Freezing eggs means the donor can have her eggs removed some time before the recipient’s IVF cycle. They found that granulosa cells, which help eggs inside the ovary grow, were less likely to multiply in the older women compared to the younger groups.