The possibility for healthy women to cryopreserve their oocytes in order to counter future infertility has gained momentum in recent years. However, women tend to cryopreserve oocytes at an age that is suboptimal from a clinical point of view--in their late thirties--when both oocyte quantity and quality have already considerably diminished and success rates for eventually establishing a pregna...

background: the cryopreservation of human oocyte would make a significant contribution to infertility treatment, such as using it for oocyte donation and for patients a bout to lose ovarian function due to surgery or chemotherapy. despite of using standard freezing straws and cryovials or even open pulled straws, only a few successful pregnancies have been arisen from cryopreserved human oocyte...

current protocols for cancer treatment could lead to the failure of ovarian function and subsequent infertility in women. therefore, utilizing ways to preserve fertility in these individuals seem to be essential. in this review, the full-text of articles which were accessible and had been published during 1976 to 2009 about different methods of female fertility preservation were collected and s...

BACKGROUND Current outcome results with embryos derived from thawed MII human oocyes are significantly lower than with embryos cryopreserved at the pronuclear stage. Here, we investigated whether freezing-thawing was associated with changes in oocyte mitochondrial polarity (DeltaPsim) that could influence competence by altering ATP levels or the ability of the cytoplasm to regulate intracellula...

BACKGROUND To develop novel cryopreservation methods, we estimated the permeability coefficients Lp (hydraulic conductivity) and P(EG) (cryoprotectant permeability) of mature human oocytes after exposure to ethylene glycol (EG) and tested the efficiency of a multi-step slow cooling protocol based on this cryoprotectant. METHODS Oocytes were perfused with 1.5 mol/l EG for 10 min. Oocyte volume...

A comparison of the amino acid sequences demonstrated that Siberian tiger gonadotropins are more homologous with those of porcine than any other commercially available preparation. The present study measured the efficacy of repeated ovarian stimulation with purified porcine gonadotropins on the follicular, hormonal, and immunogenic responses in Siberian tigers as well as on the ability of oocyt...

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) are a class of polypeptides that permit organismal survival in sub-freezing environments. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of AFP supplementation on immature mouse oocyte vitrification. Germinal vesicle-stage oocytes were vitrified using a two-step exposure to equilibrium and vitrification solution in the presence or absence of 500 ng/mL of AFP ...

Cryopreservation of oocytes and embryos is commonly used to preserve fertility. However, women undergoing cancer treatment may not have the time or may not be good candidates for these options. Ovarian cortical tissue cryopreservation and subsequent tissue transplant has been proven successful yet inefficient in preserving larger secondary follicles, and is not recommended as a fertility preser...