Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to V Agrifoglio.
A pregnancy obtained in a patient with 46XY gonadal dysgenesis (Swyer's syndrome) after ovum donation and IVF/ET is described. The efficacy of this technique in overcoming particular cases of otherwise irreversible infertility is discussed.
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After a short discussion on the rationale for the use of GnRH agonists in the stimulation protocols of GIFT and IVF/ET cycles, the authors discuss their own experience with the use of Buserelin in these cases. Buserelin was administered nasally starting on day 21 of the cycle preceding the stimulation cycle. FSH and/or HMG were administered starting on day 3 of the cycle, until the proper moment for administration of HCG. 34 cycles of GIFT and 40 cycles of IVF were studied and it was possible to observe minor endogenous LH interferences with respect to control cycles. The number of harvested ovocytes was greater, the quality of ovocytes was clearly better and both the fertilization rate and pregnancy rate were higher. The authors stress the interest of pituitary temporary ablation as first choice treatment for IVF and GIFT protocols.
Mammalian preimplantation embryos can be cryopreserved by a variety of methods involving different cryoprotectants. In the present study, we ultrarapidly froze 299 excess embryos at various early cleavage stages (zygotes, 2-cell embryos, 4-cell embryos and > 5-cell ones) after a brief exposure to high concentrations of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO; 3.5 M) and 0.25M sucrose. One-hundred seventeen of them were thawed in a warm water bath. Thirtyone embryos were completely destroyed after thawing but only 6% of them were originally at the pronuclear stage. Regarding the morphological aspects, 94% of pronucleate embryos were intact whereas just 12% of > 5-cell embryos showed more than 50% intact blastomeres after thawing. We froze also 60 embryos at the blastocyst stage by a slow freezing procedure. Eighteen blastocysts were thawed and 12 of them fully re-expanded were transferred in four patients.