Q: Is egg Freezing Experimental?
A: The answer is yes and no. The first successful pregnancy from egg freezing was reported in the medical journal Lancet in 1986 (Chen C. Lancet. 1986 Apr 19;1(8486):884-6). These early trials over 20 years ago in egg freezing initially reported poor pregnancy success rates. At that time with egg freezing was very poor and hovered around 1-2% pregnancy rate for some time.In 2003, Dr. Jeff Boldt published in Human Reproduction (Hum Reprod. 2003 Jun;18(6):1250-5.) his series of egg freezing in infertility patients. His egg thaw survival rate was 74% and the fertilization rate was 59%. Overall, 4 of 11 patients delivered 5 babies for a pregnancy rate of 36%.
Since publishing this paper Dr. Boldt's statistics have improved with a 68.5% fertilization rate and 11 live births by June, 2005.
It is important to note that these data were derived from infertility patients undergoing IVF that did not want to freeze embryos, thus egg quality was not ideal, and certainly not the quality one would obtain from young, healthy donors that are in The World Egg Banks. We anticipate frozen donor egg pregnancy rates to be the same or better than that of the infertility patients in Dr. Boldt’s study.
In 2008, The World Egg Bank began using vitrification (fast freeze) technology, collaboratively developed with Drs Jeffrey Boldt and Dr. Michael Tucker. In donor egg cycles, two recent studies show the industry experience with vitrification of donor eggs yield pregnancy rates equivalent to fresh donor cycle pregnancy rates.
To date there has been no increase in birth defects in the patients conceiving after egg freezing but the numbers are still small. Sperm and embryo freezing has been safely used for greater than 20 years without any known adverse effects. Still, until there are decades of data to evaluate, we cannot be certain than some birth defects will not be increased due to egg freezing although this does not appear likely.
Q: Can I catch AIDS or other infectious diseases from the frozen donor eggs?
A: Presently, a patient undergoing donor egg IVF with a fresh donor has a small chance of catching disease. The donors are screened just prior to the procedure but very rarely the test will not yet have turned positive. Overall, the risk of AIDS from a fresh donor cycle is similar to a blood transfusion and is small.On the male side, we are prohibited from using fresh donor sperm because of this small chance for AIDS from a donor specimen. The FDA requires that sperm be frozen and quarantined for 6 months. If the donor male then tests negative for infectious diseases, only then is the sperm sample from 6 months previous released for patient use. Since the required quarantined period in the mid- 1980s there have been no reported cases of AIDS from donor sperm.
Since egg freezing previously carried a low success rate, the FDA exempted donor egg cycles until the technology was available. Now that egg freezing is possible, the frozen eggs will be quarantined the same way as frozen sperm.