Health

IVF with Donor Eggs Less Successful in Black Women

by Barbara McPherson | May 8, 2009 at 09:06 am

195 views | 24 Recommendations | 1 comment

I don't know what to make of these research results. Firstly, I ask myself, what constitutes being "black". Is a person with an African ancestor automatically "black"? How do you classify someone with a heritage from both Sweden and Botswana? Do you classify them? While on the surface this research seems significant, I think the scientists need to look for a less obvious factor than skin colour as influencing their results.

The research team, headed by Dr. Tarun Jain at Chicago IVF in Warrenville, Illinois, reviewed data on 29,948 donor-egg IVF cycles, and analyzed only the 60 percent of these cycles in which there was no indication that the donors and mothers varied in ethnicity.

According to the investigators' report, they found that "compared to white women, black women were more likely to have a failed cycle prior to embryo transfer, less likely to achieve a pregnancy, and less likely to have a live birth."