Abstract
Fecundity in humans is inefficient, with an estimated 25% chance of successful conception per cycle. in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients and practitioners have to confront such natural inefficiencies in addition to the inherent difficulties of the IVF treatment process. A major contributor to nature’s wastage is oocyte and embryo aneuploidy – estimated to be as high as 70% in some circumstances. Modern IVF practice has no dependable means of selecting viable embryos, but attempts are made to identify nonviable ones – such efforts include aneuploidy screening using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). However, this technology can only assess a limited number of chromosomes routinely, leaving the remainder unexamined. Aside from this limitation, its practice is riddled with deficiencies. To date, aneuploidy screening using FISH has been reported, in a welter of publications, to improve live birth rates; however, in the limited reports involving randomized, controlled trials, FISH has not been proven to be efficacious for embryo selection – one particular reason being that the whole chromosome complement is not amenable for assessment. Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) was first introduced to IVF in an attempt to overcome this particular problem, with the hope that the transfer of only euploid embryos will improve live birth rates. CGH is not without its own difficulties but, nevertheless, still excites considerable promise as a technology that will eventually significantly improve the outcome of an IVF treatment cycle. This paper reviews the current considerations for the use of CGH, its recent implementation into clinical IVF and the future prospects.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.