This is one of a series of news items from abstracts of studies presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine as complied by Dr. David Meldrum, formerly a partner and Scientific Director of Reproductive Partners. We appreciate the enormous amount of work it takes to compile and comment on these abstracts.
It is commonly thought that the age of a recipient of donor eggs does not have an effect on the chance of success of a donor egg cycle, believing that the age of the uterus carrying the pregnancy is irrelevant.
An abstract presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) questions that belief.
Using SART registry data and age 40-44 as reference, the egg donation recipient live birth rate decreased from 56% to 53% age 45-49, and to 49% at over 49.
Since it’s not the donor egg that is the cause of this observation, is it the age of the uterus or the age of the male partner which is to blame? It was not mentioned whether results were controlled for male age, which some studies have shown relates to outcome of egg donation. Since male age is likely to correlate highly with recipient’s age, this may be the factor that explains these data.