Interest in oocyte cryopreservation has recently increased with the growing importance of in vitro embryo production, nuclear transfer, and gene banking (Gordon, 1997; Andrus et al., 2000). A relatively recent approach to achieve rapid freezing without the use of expensive freezing devices is called vitrification. Vitrification is defined as the physical process by which a highly concentrated s...

BACKGROUND Cryopreservation is now considered as an efficient way to store human oocytes to preserve fertility. However, little is known about the effects of this technology on oocyte gene expression. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of the two cryopreservation procedures, slow freezing and vitrification, on the gene expression profile of human metaphase II (MII) oocytes. METHO...

As the efficiency of oocyte cryopreservation has increased rapidly in recent years, oocytes are currently being stored either in the course of IVF treatments or as a fertility preservation measure. These practices may have an impact on the number of available donor oocytes due to two different dynamics: first, a certain percentage of women for whom oocytes were cryopreserved will eventually not...

Oocyte cryopreservation in carnivores can significantly improve assisted reproductive technologies in animal breeding and preservation programs for endangered species. However, the cooling process severely affects the integrity and the survival of the oocyte after thawing and may irreversibly compromise its subsequent developmental capability. In the present study, two different methods of oocy...

OBJECTIVE To estimate age-specific probabilities of live birth with oocyte cryopreservation in nondonor (ND) egg cycles. DESIGN Individual patient data meta-analysis. SETTING Assisted reproduction centers. PATIENT(S) Infertile patients undergoing ND mature oocyte cryopreservation. INTERVENTION(S) PubMed was searched for clinical studies on oocyte cryopreservation from January 1996 throu...

Strategies to preserve fertility in dogs and cats as cryopreservation of epididymal spermatozoa, oocytes and ovarian tissue will be discussed in this review. Recent results indicate that significant progress have been achieved, but optimal freezing protocols have not been defined yet. The extreme sensitivity of sperm membranes and of oocyte and ovarian tissue structure deserves further investig...

Recent studies have shown that L-proline is a natural osmoprotectant and an antioxidant to protect cells from injuries such as that caused by freezing and thawing in many species including plant, ram sperm and human endothelial cells. Nevertheless, this nontoxic cryoprotectant has not yet been applied to mammalian oocyte vitrification. In this study we evaluated the efficiency and safety of the...

Both sperm and embryo cryopreservation have become routine procedures in human assisted reproduction and oocyte cryopreservation is being introduced into clinical practice and is getting more and more widely used. Embryo cryopreservation has decreased the number of fresh embryo transfers and maximized the effectiveness of the IVF cycle. The data shows that women who had transfers of fresh and f...