Why do some embryos stop growing in the IVF lab ?

If you have gone through IVF, you may have heard your IVF doctor or embryologist say - “Some of your embryos stopped developing (got arrested), and we had to discard them .” There are some unlucky women who end up with no embryos to transfer,  because all their embryos stopped developing at some time point during their preimplantation growth ! Why does this “developmental arrest “of embryos happen ? Are there any ways to prevent it ? About 15% of IVF embryos arrest during mitosis (during cell division) at the 2-4 cell cleavage stage. Some arrest immediately following fertilization and will not divide past the one-celled stage. Over half of all arrested human embryos display chromosomal abnormalities (genetic defect). This means the commonest reason of in vitro developmental arrest is a genetic problem, which prevents the growth of abnormal embryos. However, this is not the only reason for the arrest. . An embryo might undergo developmental arrest because of : 1)    Sub-optimal culture conditions 2)    Chromosomal abnormalities 3)    Failure to activate its embryonic genome 4)    Mitochondrial defects When embryos are exposed to sub-optimal culture conditions in the IVF lab ( for example, when the lab incubators malfunction; or if there is an infection in the culture medium) , they might stop dividing further because of the insult they have suffered. If you learn that the greater proportion of your em...
Source: The Patient's Doctor - Category: Obstetricians and Gynecologists Tags: embryo arrest IVF embryos arrested embryos fragmented embryos failed IVF Source Type: blogs