Non-invasive mass spectrometric viability assessment of in vitro fertilized embryos using the alpha-1 chain of human haptoglobin
Gergely Montsko, Krisztina Godony, Akos Varnagy, Jozsef Bodis and Gabor L Kovacs
University of Pecs, Hungary
: Androl Gynecol: Curr Res
Abstract
Infertility nowadays is a growing health issue in the developed world meaning that every year more and more couples visit an assisted reproduction (ART) centre. However, the success rate of the process is stagnating at about 30%. An effort is made worldwide to find new additional indicators of embryo viability to implement the routinely used morphological evaluation. Spent embryo culture medium samples (n=201) were measured using liquid chromatography coupled mass spectrometry in a series of retrospective, blind experiments. No sample preparation was made, 10 μl of sample was directly injected into the instrument after the addition of internal standard solution. A protein marker was found which significantly (p<0.001) differed in quantity between the samples of embryos which did or did not implant. This protein was identified as the alpha-1 chain of human haptoglobin molecule. A significant correlation (p<0.001) was also found when comparing the clinical outcome (clinical pregnancy or no pregnancy) and the outcome predicted by the measurements. The haptoglobin fragment quantitation serves as an additional tool along the process of morphological evaluation. The blind, retrospective results provided a positive predictive value of more than 50%. The negative predictive value of the analysis was 100%, there were no embryos which were diagnosed as “viable” but resulted in clinical pregnancy. The results provided a contra selection tool, screening the embryos with good morphological aspects, but no implantation potential.
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