Many women over 43 need donor eggs for IVF success

Women over 43 years of age have higher IVF success rates when using donor eggs, a new study found.

A collaboration between the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Vienna, Austria, reviewed data from the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority, on IVF treatments, from 1991 to 2018. For women above 43 years of age, IVF success rates using their own eggs is lower than five percent compared to a success rate of over 30 percent for first cycle IVF treatments using donor eggs.

'Our findings indicate that fertility recuperation at advanced ages is highly unlikely to succeed with [fertility treatment] using a patient's own eggs. Egg donation and egg freezing can improve the chances of conception, but they also have important limitations making them insufficient to fully offset the fertility loss associated with delayed childbearing,' said Dr Ester Lazzari, from the University of Vienna, and senior author in the study published in Population Studies.

The researchers looked at success rates for a woman's first cycle of treatment, stratified by age. Success rates of 29.6 percent were seen in women aged between 18 to 34, this rate gradually declined with the lowest success rate of 8.4 percent for women aged 43 to 44 years old. There is, however, a slight increase in these rates again to 16.2 percent for women aged 45 to 50 years old. The success rate differs depending on whether women use their own eggs or donor eggs.

The number of IVF treatments per year has been increasing in the UK since 1992 when 11,000 patients began their first cycle, by 2018 this number had risen to nearly 25,000. The number of treatments has particularly increased in women aged 35 to 39 using their own eggs and in women aged 40 to 44 using donor eggs.

'These findings carry an important message not just for the UK, but for societies worldwide, where delayed childbearing is becoming more common,' concluded Dr Lazzari.

The authors call for clearer public health communication around the realistic success rates of IVF by age, as well as the need for donor eggs or egg freezing, while also calling for policies to support people who wish to have children earlier in life.

Reports have previously shown that the number of egg freezing cycles has increased in both the UK (see BioNews 1295) and the USA (see BioNews 1308), but the number of patients returning to use their frozen eggs is as yet low.