Successful pregnancy following oocyte activation by strontium in normozoospermic patients of unexplained infertility with fertilisation failures during previous intracytoplasmic sperm injection treatment
Juan Chen A , Yun Qian A B C , Yong Tan A and Hirofumi Mima BA Department of Reproductive Medicine, Affiliated Jiangsu Province Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 155 Hanzhong Road, Nanjing 210029, China.
B Human Fertility Center, Mima Maternity-Ladies’ Clinic Hospital, 15-2 Kashiwagicho Hakodate, Hokkaido 042-0942, Japan.
C Corresponding author. Email: qianyun@njmu.edu.cn
Reproduction, Fertility and Development 22(5) 852-855 https://doi.org/10.1071/RD09268
Submitted: 3 November 2009 Accepted: 30 November 2009 Published: 15 April 2010
Abstract
Fertilisation failures occur in 2–3% of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles and are mostly caused by failure of oocyte activation. Assisted oocyte activation (AOA) may be an efficient treatment option to overcome oocyte activation failure. To evaluate the effectiveness of ICSI combined with AOA by strontium, six couples with complete fertilisation failure or low fertilisation rates (ranging from 0% to 16.7%; mean = 7.7%) in previous ICSI cycles were involved in the present study. In the latest ICSI cycles, AOA by strontium treatment was combined with ICSI to improve clinical outcomes. Fifty-two mature oocytes retrieved from six females were stimulated by strontium treatment after ICSI procedure, and 41 (78.8%) of them were successfully fertilised. The high-quality embryo rate was 41.5% (17/41) after culture for 5 days. Thirteen embryos were transferred (ranging from 2 to 3 per individual) resulting in three clinical pregnancies and three healthy babies were born. Furthermore, a pregnancy resulting in the birth of a healthy female infant was achieved following transfer of three frozen–thawed embryos. In conclusion, it appears that strontium treatment would be an effective method for AOA to improve fertilisation rates and embryo quality in cases with fertilisation failure after ICSI.
Additional keyword: assisted oocyte activation (AOA).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Fifthly Development Foundation of Top Talent on Six Vocations of Department of Personnel of Jiangsu Province of China, the Especial Grant of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Jiangsu Province of China. The authors are grateful to Dr Jianchi Ding from Oak Brook Fertility Center, USA, for his assistance with the preparation of this manuscript.
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