ESHRE 2020

Institut Marquès presents its latest scientific works at the Congress of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology

We have participated in the ESHRE congress with two oral communication and six posters.

Focused on the embryos´ morphokinetics and the psychological aspects of Assisted Reproduction, the studies of Institut Marquès were presented virtually in the 36th ESHRE congress.

These are works that address from different perspectives the possibilities of improving the results of treatments both in the medical approach and in the procedures in the laboratory.

Social aspects of Assisted Reproduction

After an assisted reproductive treatment, deciding what to do with the leftover embryos poses a problem to couples. Half of them prefer that the clinic decides about their fate. Institut Marquès started in 2004 the first embryo adoption/ donation programme to give a chance of life to those embryos that were kept frozen in its laboratories without being assigned. Thanks to this initiative over 1,600 children have been born from 124 different nationalities. At the ESHRE congress, the Institut Marquès team has presented its analysis on the differences when it comes to choosing the destination of the leftover embryos after an assisted reproduction treatment, depending on the patients´ nationalities.

On the other hand, the social perception of infertility is another of the objects of study of Institut Marquès. Analysing surveys of over 1,700 patients from 10 different countries, the conclusions of the study presented at the European Congress indicates that infertility in Europe is still taboo and that social rejection keeps increasing. This feeling is directly linked with legislation, culture and religion of each country and it has to be taken into account in the clinical practice in order to help patients keep emotionally positive during the treatment.

Selecting the best embryos

Much of the work presented by Institut Marquès at ESHRE this year aims to achieve a better selection of embryos by analysing their development. These works offer a new perspective on scales to measure the quality of embryos and demonstrate the ability of cells to self-repair and to improve their internal division process.

How many donor eggs are necessary for an IVF treatment?

Dr Borja Marquès is the main researcher of another one of the studies presented by Institut Marquès at the ESHRE. In his poster he shows that the results in an In Vitro Fertilisation treatment with egg donation do not improve if we exponentially increase the number of eggs without taking into account their quality: the best results are obtained with a tight number of mature oocytes. Thus, while with 5-7 oocytes the pregnancy rate per cycle is 91%, using between 8 and 10 oocytes, this rate does not increase or remains the same. This analysis points out that the only thing that is achieved by increasing the number of eggs in each donation is to get a greater number of abandoned embryos in the laboratory.

The works presented at ESHRE can be found here: https://institutomarques.com/en/scientific-area/eshre-2020/