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PETBioNewsNewsChromosome length may predict IVF success

BioNews

Chromosome length may predict IVF success

Published 9 June 2009 posted in News and appears in BioNews 229

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BioNews

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.

The likelihood of IVF success could be down to the length of a woman's telomeres - the segments of DNA that make up the ends of chromosomes - reports Nature magazine. US scientists, based at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, have shown that women whose eggs have shorter chromosome tips...

The likelihood of IVF success could be down to the length of a woman's telomeres - the segments of DNA that make up the ends of chromosomes - reports Nature magazine. US scientists, based at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, have shown that women whose eggs have shorter chromosome tips are less likely to produce an IVF baby. Team leader David Keefe hopes that doctors might be able to use the findings to increase IVF success rates, by selecting eggs with long telomeres. He presented the results at the annual American Society for Reproductive Medicine, being held in San Antonio, Texas this week.


Every time a cell copies its chromosomes (bundles of genetic material), and divides to produce new cells, its telomeres become slightly shorter. So telomere length reflects the age of the parent cell - previous studies have linked short telomeres to aging eggs. But the new study is the first to look at the connection between telomere length and the likelihood of IVF success, which is known to decline with age. The team measured the telomeres in 43 spare eggs, donated by women undergoing IVF treatment, and found that their length varied from between 100 up to 19,000 chemical units of DNA. They found that women whose eggs had an average telomere length of less than 6,300 chemical units never produced a pregnancy.


The results could help doctors 'sift through multiple eggs' to find those most likely to produce a pregnancy, says Keefe. The study could also help explain why fertility declines naturally with age, and why some women have difficulty in conceiving. Those with particularly short telomeres might be helped by searching for their few eggs that have longer telomeres, or by using an egg donor.

Related Articles

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
News
26 October 2012 • 2 minutes read

Chromosome screening may increase IVF success in older mothers

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Using a new IVF technique could considerably increase older women's chances of pregnancy, a small clinical trial presented at a fertility conference suggests...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
Comment
31 May 2011 • 3 minutes read

New telomere tests do not predict when you will die, but you may still want the information

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Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
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9 June 2009 • 2 minutes read

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Stress can speed up the aging process, according to a new US study. Scientists based at the University of California have found that cells taken from women who experience high levels of stress appear years older than their actual biological age. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National...

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