The effect of artificial shrinkage and assisted hatching on the development of mouse blastocysts and cell number after vitrification

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to ascertain optimal assisted hatching (AH) method in frozen embryo transfer. We compared the effect of depending on whether mechanical or laser-AH was performed before or after the vitrification of embryo development rate and blastocyst cell numbers. METHODS In order to induce superovulation, pregnant mare's serum gonadotropin followed by human chorionic gonadotropin were injected into 4- to 5-week-old female mice. 2-cell embryos were then collected by flushing out the oviducts. The Expanded blastocysts were recovered after the collected embryos were incubated for 48 hours, and were then subjected to artificial shrinkage (AS) and cross-mechanical AH (cMAH) or quarter-laser zona thinning-AH (qLZT-AH) were carried out using the expanded blastocysts before or after vitrification. After 48 hours of incubation, followed by vitrification and thawing (V-T), and blastocysts were fluorescence stained and observed. RESULTS The rate of formation of hatched blastocysts after 24 and 72 hours of incubation was significantly higher in the AS/qLZT-AH/V-T group than in the other groups (p<0.05). The cell number of the inner cell mass was higher in AS/V-T/non-AH and AS/V-T/cMAH groups than those of others (p<0.05). In the control group, the number of trophectoderm and the total cell number were higher than in the AS-AH group (p<0.05). CONCLUSION The above results suggest that AS and AH in vitrification of expanded blastocysts lead to the more efficient formation of hatched blastocysts in mice.