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Abstract
Background
There is ongoing interest in glucocorticoid treatment during oocyte stimulation to treat infertility in women who have undergone Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).
Objective
This meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the efficiency and safety of adjuvant glucocorticoid therapy on pregnancy outcomes in infertile women undergoing ART cycles.
Study design
A literature search was performed in PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library up to December 2022. To assess the efficacy and safety of additional glucocorticoid treatment during ovulation induction in women who underwent IVF or ICSI treatment, only randomized controlled trials were included.
Results
Overall, glucocorticoid therapy during ovulation showed a nonsignificant effect of prednisolone improving the live birth rate (OR = 1.03, 95% CI [.75, 1.43], I2 = .0%, p = .84), abortion rate (OR = 1.14, 95% CI [.62, 2.08], I2 = 31%, p = .68), and implantation rate (OR = 1.1, 95% CI [.82, 1.5], I2 = 8%, p = .52) of infertile women compared to the control group. The present meta-analysis revealed that the clinical pregnancy rate per cycle tended to increase after glucocorticoid treatment (OR = 1.29, 95% CI [1.02, 1.63], I2 = 8%, p = .52).
Conclusions
The present meta-analysis suggested that ovarian stimulation prednisolone therapy does not significantly improve clinical outcomes in women undergoing IVF/ICSI. Although the results indicated that adjuvant glucocorticoid therapy during ovarian stimulation may increase the clinical pregnancy rate, subgroup analysis showed that it was affected by infertility factors, dose schedules, and length of treatment. Therefore, these results should be interpreted with caution.
Acknowledgements
Not applicable.
Consent to participate
Not applicable.
Authors’ contributions
Data curation: Li Lin and Taoqiong Li.
Formal analysis: Li Lin and Wujiang Gao.
Methodology: Taoqiong Li and Chunli Sha.
Software: Lu Chen and Hong Wei.
Validation: Xiaolan Zhu.
Funding acquisition: Xiaolan Zhu.
Writing – original draft: Li Lin and Lu Chen.
Writing – review & editing: Xiaolan Zhu and Hong Wei.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Disclosure statement
No conflict of interest exits in the submission of this manuscript, and manuscript is approved by all authors for publication.
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data availability statement
Not applicable.