Ehab Darwish
TopLab, Egypt
Title: A preliminary report of successful cleavage after calcium ionophore activation at ICSI in cases with previous arrest at the pronuclear stage
Biography
Biography: Ehab Darwish
Abstract
Artificial oocyte activation (AOA) has been previously suggested as a means to overcome the problem of total fertilization failure, which affects about 1–3% of the intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles. A preliminary study on the application of chemical AOA was conducted using A23187 Ca2+ ionophore to improve embryonic development in four women with a history of complete fertilization arrest and inability to transit to cleavage stage during previous ICSI trials. Data indicated that activated oocytes resulted in better fertilization, embryonic development and clinical pregnancy in one of the four couples. Therefore, ICSI combined with AOA using Ca2+ ionophore may be useful in selected patients with cleavage failure, and may help the zygotes to reach more advanced developmental stages. I have to say that this is a novel usage to Ca2+ ionophore in treating embryo cleavage block