Toronto Star
Donor eggs increasingly used for pregnancy with often good results though twins still common
Having a single baby born on time at a healthy weight is still uncommon, a study found.
U.S. women are increasingly using donated
eggs to get pregnant, but haveea a single baby born on time at a healthy
weight is still uncommon, a study found.
CHICAGO — U.S. women
are increasingly using donated eggs to get pregnant, with often good
results, although the ideal outcome — a single baby born on time at a
healthy weight — is still uncommon, a study found.
That ideal result
occurred in about 1 out of 4 donor egg pregnancies in 2010, up from 19
per cent a decade earlier, the study found.
Almost 56 per cent
resulted in a live birth in 2010, and though most of these were
generally healthy babies, 37 per cent were twins and many were born
prematurely, at low birth weights. Fewer than 1 per cent were triplets.
Low birth weights are less than about 5 ½ pounds and babies born that
small are at risk for complications including breathing problems,
jaundice, feeding difficulties and eye problems.
For women who use in
vitro fertilization and their own eggs, the live-birth rate varies by
age and is highest — about 40 per cent — among women younger than 35.
Women who use IVF with
donor eggs are usually older and don’t have viable eggs of their own.
Because the donor eggs are from young, healthy women, they have a good
chance of success, generally regardless of the recipient’s age.
The average age of women using donor eggs was 41 in 2010 and donors were aged 28 on average; those didn’t change over 10 years.
The study, by
researchers at Emory University and the federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, was published online Thursday in the Journal of
the American Medical Association and presented at the American Society
for Reproductive Medicine’s annual meeting in Boston.
IVF involves mixing
eggs and sperm in a lab dish and transferring the resulting embryo to
the woman’s womb a few days later. It’s most often used with the woman’s
own eggs, in cases of infertility.
The study found
attempts using donor eggs increased over the decade from 10,801 to
18,306. Transferring just one embryo, to avoid multiple births, also
increased, from less than 1 per cent to 15 per cent in 2010.
Lead author Dr.
Jennifer Kawwass of Emory University said researchers still need to find
better ways to identify which embryos have the best chance of resulting
in healthy babies.
Dr. William Schlaff,
ob-gyn chief at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said the
rise in use of donor eggs “is probably partly a social story. Women not
having success in becoming pregnant in their late 30s and 40s are more
comfortable using donor eggs” and techniques have improved to raise
success rates, Schlaff said. He was not involved in the research.
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