Affiliation:
1. Instituto Bernabeu Biotech
2. Instituto Bernabeu of Fertility and Gynaecology
3. Chair of Community Medicine and Reproductive Health, Miguel Hernández University, Alicante, Spain
Abstract
Purpose of review
The presence of cell-free DNA (cf-DNA) in the embryo spent culture medium allows to develop a noninvasive PGT-A (niPGTA). Noninvasive PGT-A may provide a simpler, safer and less costly approach to preimplantation genetic testing of aneuploidy (PGT-A). Furthermore, niPGTA would provide wider access to embryo genetic analysis and circumvent many legal and ethical considerations. However, the concordance rate between the results obtained by PGT-A and niPGTA varies among studies and, their clinical utility has not been already demonstrated. This review evaluates the niPGTA reliability based on SCM and adds new knowledge about the clinical relevance of SCM for noninvasive PGT-A.
Recent findings
The most recent concordance studies evaluating the accuracy of niPGTA using SCM showed a high variation in the informativity rate of SCM and the diagnostic concordance. Also, sensitivity and specificity showed similar heterogeneous results. Therefore, these results do not support the clinical utility of niPGTA. Regarding clinical outcome, the data are initial and further research, including randomized and nonselection studies are needed.
Summary
Further research, including randomized and nonselection studies, as well as optimization of embryo culture conditions and medium retrieval, are needed to improve the reliability and clinical utility of niPGTA.
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Subject
Obstetrics and Gynecology