Endometriosis Reduces Chance of Having a Baby Even with Assisted Reproduction, Study Shows

The results showed that 99 women who became pregnant using fresh embryo transfer miscarried (corresponding to 16.8% of all 588 women) while 489 women (83.2%) gave birth to a baby.

Endometriosis significantly decreases the likelihood of conceiving even with assisted reproductive technique such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), according to a study published in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology.

In order to identify and estimate risk factors leading to a miscarriage following IVF or ICSI, a team of researchers led by Dr. Daniel Fehr at University Medical Centre Düsseldorf in Germany retrospectively analyzed 588 women who became pregnant following fertility treatment using fresh embryo transfers and 150 women who became pregnant using frozen and thawed embryo transfers. Ten percent of women who underwent fresh embryo transfers had endometriosis.

The results showed that 99 women who became pregnant using fresh embryo transfer miscarried (corresponding to 16.8% of all 588 women) while 489 women (83.2%) gave birth to a baby.

Importantly, the researchers found that the rate of miscarriage was higher in patients with endometriosis, following embryo transfer. The rate of miscarriage was also influenced by the age of the woman at the time of egg collection and the levels of testosterone, or male hormone, in their blood.

Factors such as previous pregnancies that reached term, smoking habit, ICSI versus IVF, body mass index (BMI), levels of thyroid stimulating hormone, endometrium thickness, the level of estradiol before embryo transfer, and the age of the male partner, did not affect the outcome of the pregnancy.

Of the 150 women who became pregnant using frozen and thawed embryo transfer, 37 miscarried (24.7%) and 113 (75.3%) gave birth to a baby. Longer storage time of fertilized eggs tended to result in a slightly higher risk of miscarriage but this was only observed as a trend.

Endometriosis has been associated with infertility for many years. However, the difficulty in diagnosing endometriosis has made it difficult to calculate the prevalence of infertility among women with the disease. Previous research has shown that stage III and stage IV endometriosis may be associated with a decreased rate of implantation of the fertilized egg to the uterus.  

Research Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301211517301616