Purpose To determine the prevalence of allergy in couples undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the relationship between having allergy and IVF treatment outcomes. Design A retrospective cohort study of female infertility patients aged 20-49 years and their male partners undergoing IVF cycles from August 2010 to December 2016 in an academic fertility program. Results Prevalence data was collected for 493 couples (935 cycles). Over half of the female patients (54%) had at least one reported allergy versus the cited US prevalence of 10-30%. Antibiotic (54.7%) and non-antibiotic medication (39.2%) were the most common female allergy subtypes. Fewer male patients reported allergy (21.7%). Data on β-hCG outcomes were calculated for 841 cycles from 458 couples with no significant relationship found except for number of cycles including ICSI and number of embryos transferred per cycle (1.81 for those without allergy vs 2.07 for those with allergy, p = 0.07). Female patients with allergy were marginally statistically more likely to have a negative β-hCG (p = 0.07) and less likely to have a successful cycle (p = 0.06). When allergy subgroups were evaluated, there were no significant differences between groups except for a higher number of embryos transferred in women with environmental/other allergies (p = 0.02).
ConclusionThe prevalence of allergy among patients seeking infertility treatment is high compared with the general population. However, allergy was not found to be associated with IVF cycle outcomes. These findings are likely primarily limited by difficulty in defining specific allergy types within a retrospective study.
Patients in all BMI groups had similar gravidity, parity, and cycle characteristics, including endometrial thickness, percent of embryos biopsied for preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A), day of embryo biopsy, and blastocyst morphology. CP rate did not differ among BMI groups. There were also no differences in OP/LB (p¼0.78), EPL (p¼0.37), and CPL rates (p¼0.88) among BMI groups, before and after adjusting for confounders.CONCLUSIONS: While the maternal metabolic environment adversely affects IVF outcomes in obese women, the mechanism of action is not fully understood. Following transfer of a single, frozen blastocyst in OD cycles, overweight and obese patients had similar CP, OP/LB, EPL, and CPL rates compared to controls. This study is the first to evaluate the impact of obesity on implantation, independent of oocyte quality, and confirms that maternal obesity exhibits minimal effect on the endometrium. Future studies of the endometrial transcriptome and metabolome may improve our understanding of the impact of nutritional status and obesity on endometrial receptivity.
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