ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Reproduction
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1583779
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in the Study of the Developmental Process and Gene State of Gametes and EmbryosView all 10 articles
Clinical Outcomes of Frozen-Thawed Single Blastocyst Transfer Derived from Day 3 Low-Quality Embryos: A retrospective cohort study
Provisionally accepted
Xinyan Zhao1*
Zhou Qiongge2- 1Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
- 2Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
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Purpose To explore the clinical outcome of single blastocyst frozen-thawed transfer (sFET) derived from embryos with day 3 (D3) low-quality. Methods This retrospective cohort study was executed at the Reproductive Health Center of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University. We collected all the data on sFET between March 2016 and September 2022. The blastocysts derived from D3 good-quality embryos and low-quality embryos were designated as good-quality group and lowquality group, respectively. Patients were divided into 3 groups according to different ages: < 35 group, 35-39 group and ≥40 group. Depending on whether preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) or not, blastocysts derived from low-quality embryos were divided into PGT group and non-PGT group, respectively. Results After adjustment for female age, male age, infertility duration and other potential confounders, the difference clinical pregnancy rate and live birth rate in good-quality group and low-quality group maintained statistical significance (a OR=0.32 and 0.35, p<0.001). Adjusted for embryo quality, the clinical pregnancy rate and live birth rate in the <35 group and 35-39 group were significantly higher than those in the ≥40 group(OR=3.02 and 3.56, p<0.001; OR=1.89 and 1.84, p<0.001). Embryo quality significantly affects the clinical pregnancy and live birth (p<0.001) The clinical pregnancy rate and live birth rate in PGT group were higher than those in non-PGT group (40.0% vs 29.3%; 40.0% vs 22.0%). Conclusion The D3 embryos with low score/low quality can still obtain a certain live birth rate after further culture to blastocysts with PGT.
Keywords: low-quality embryos, morphological score, Frozen-thawed transfer, single blastocyst, clinical outcomes
Received: 26 Feb 2025; Accepted: 03 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao and Qiongge. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xinyan Zhao, Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
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