Changes in preferences for embryo disposition was linked to treatment outcome and highlighted the need for a two-stage process to obtain fully informed consent. In this Canadian sample, patients' affinity for research declined after treatment.

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Assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) represent the best chance for infertile couples to conceive, although increased risks for morbidities exist, including imprinting disorders. This increased risk could arise from ARTs disrupting genomic imprints during gametogenesis or preimplantation. The few studies examining ART effects on genomic imprinting primarily assessed poor quality human embryos. Here, we examined day 3 and blastocyst stage, good to high quality, donated human embryos for imprinted SNRPN, KCNQ1OT1 and H19 methylation. Seventy-six percent day 3 embryos and 50% blastocysts exhibited perturbed imprinted methylation, demonstrating that extended culture did not pose greater risk for imprinting errors than short culture. Comparison of embryos with normal and abnormal methylation didn’t reveal any confounding factors. Notably, two embryos from male factor infertility patients using donor sperm harboured aberrant methylation, suggesting errors in these embryos cannot be explained by infertility alone. Overall, these results indicate that ART human preimplantation embryos possess a high frequency of imprinted methylation errors.

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background: This study evaluated couples' perceptions of preparatory psychosocial counselling prior to participation in medically assisted reproduction (MAR).methods: Eighty-three couples about to undergo IUI treatment were asked about their expectations regarding a subsequent single psychosocial counselling session and assessed in terms of their levels of infertility-specific stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms. Afterwards, participants rated their satisfaction with different elements of the session.results: Almost two-thirds of women and one-half of men expected counselling to be important, and the majority anticipated that the session would be helpful and informative. Views of preparatory counselling were significantly more positive afterwards, indicating that a focused session addressing issues of treatment concerns, goal setting and managing infertility stress was more beneficial than anticipated. Those experiencing higher levels of infertility-specific stress expected the counselling session to be more important, and elevated stress and greater utilization of social support were predictive of post-counselling satisfaction.

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