Munné S, Escudero T, Colls P, Zheng X, Cinnioglu C, Cohen
Reprogenetics, West Orange, NJ

Introduction: The increase of aneuploidy with maternal age has been demonstrated both with live birth, fetus, embryos and oocyte data. In contrast, post-meiotic abnormalities such as mosaicism, polyploidy, and haploidy, are constant around 30% regardless of maternal age. However, age is only a gross indicator of chromosome abnormalities and there seems to be great variation within ages. The purpose of this study was to evaluate such variation.

Methods: Patients undergoing IVF and PGD for aneuploidy using probes for 9 chromosomes were included in this retrospective study. Cycles with 4 or less embryos were not included. The IVF cycle was performed in 88 different IVF clinics, and the PGD analysis performed by Reprogenetics.

Results: Results are summarized in the below table. Overall, 31% of embryos were normal, with a maximum average of 42% below age 30 and a minimum average   of 23% above age 39. However, 20% of young patients had less than 25% normal embryos and 5% of women 40 and older had more than 50% normal ones.

Discussion: The high rate of chromosome abnormalities in human embryos may warrant PGD for all IVF cycles, provided that the selection advantage of PGD compensates for the potential damage caused by the biopsy or biospies. The alternative is to not involve PGD for aneuploidy with the likely result of unpredictable rates and high order