When a few months ago I wrote the editorial for the first issue of volume 23 (Pacey, Citation2020), the world was entering lockdown because of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Now, as I assemble the articles and write the editorial for the second issue, the world is beginning to tentatively emerge.
What is now clear is that one of the unfortunate consequences of lockdown in many countries has been the understandable cessation of infertility treatments, which for some patients will have caused inevitable heartache and stress. The hope for patients and healthcare professionals alike is surely that routine assisted reproduction treatments can begin again in earnest as soon as possible. Although, perhaps inevitably, these are now going to be delivered in a different way with social distancing in place and a greater reliance on personal protective equipment than we had before.
As such, in this issue, I have assembled a number of articles which serve to remind us of the science and medicine which underpins our work helping to overcome infertility. These include a commentary by Liu et al. (Citation2019) which reviews the current state of play with regard to the use of time-lapse videography for the assessment of embryos and proposes some potential research directions to try and move this field forward. We also publish a review article by Heidary et al. (Citation2018) on the genetic aspects of idiopathic asthenozoospermia — surely an area of reproductive medicine where we need to know more? Then, there are also 7 original articles reporting on studies which investigate ovarian stimulation (Mendret-Pellerin et al., Citation2018), the genetics of recurrent implantation failure (Turienzo et al., Citation2018) and prenatal testing after subfertility (Hendrix et al., Citation2018) among others.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue of the journal and that it goes some way to bring a little normality back to your post-lockdown life.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
References
- Heidary, Z., Saliminejad, K., Zaki-Dizaji, M., & Khorram Khorshid, H. R. (2018). Genetic aspects of idiopathic asthenozoospermia as a cause of male infertility. Human Fertility, 23(2), 83–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2018.1504325
- Hendrix, M., Arits, J., Bannink, R., van Montfoort, A., Willekes, C., den Hartog, J., & Al-Nasiry, S. (2018). The choice for invasive prenatal tests after subfertility. Human Fertility, 23(2), 134–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2018.1517238
- Liu, Y., Sakkas, D., Afnan, M., & Matson, P. (2019). Time-lapse videography for embryo selection/de-selection: a bright future or fading star? Human Fertility, 23(2), 76–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2019.1598586
- Mendret-Pellerin, S., Leperlier, F., Reignier, A., Lefebvre, T., Barrière, P., & Fréour, T. (2018). A pilot study comparing corifollitropin alfa associated with hp-HMG versus high dose rFSH antagonist protocols for ovarian stimulation in poor responders. Human Fertility, 23(2), 93–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2018.1504326
- Pacey, A. A. (2020). Lockdown. Human Fertility (Cambridge, England)), 23(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2020.1752460
- Turienzo, A., Lledó, B., Ortiz, J. A., Ortiz, J. A., Morales, R., Sanz, J., Llácer, J., & Bernabeu, R. (2018). Prevalence of candidate single nucleotide polymorphisms on p53, IL-11, IL-10, VEGF and APOE in patients with repeated implantation failure (RIF) and pregnancy loss (RPL). Human Fertility, 23(2), 117–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2018.1524935