According to a study presented Wednesday at a Lyon meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, pregnancy and live birth rates were relatively lower among women whose embryos were screened compared with those whose were not.
Experts now suggest that genetic screening should not be a routine part of fertility treatment for women over 35. Pre-genetic screening is a process that involves taking a single cell from a developing embryo to look for chromosomal defects that could lead to problems such as Down's syndrome.
AP quotes Dr. Sebastiaan Mastenbroek from the Center for Reproductive Medicine at the University of Amsterdam as saying, "Based on our research, I would say skip the pre-genetic screening and stick with regular in-vitro fertilization."
The study, which wa also published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, says that many fertility centers promote the genetic tests because it costs up to $5,000 and can generate a huge amount of profit.
The research, which involved 408 women, aged 35-41 and undergoing three cycles of in-vitro fertilization, tested embryos from half of those women. Researchers found that those who received the screening had a substantially lower pregnancy rate than those who did not: 25 percent versus 37 percent.
More than 60 percent of the embryos implanted into women who had them screened were abnormal. However the researchers were not able to determine the exact cause behind the abnormalities.
