Fertility experts urge UK to adopt new DNA screening for IVF embryos

A new technique to genetically screen IVF embryos should be considered for use in the UK, fertility experts say. The call comes after research revealed it could help doctors select embryos that have the best of chance of leading to a pregnancy.

Pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) is more common in the US than the UK, and is used by doctors to flag up embryos with an abnormal number of chromosomes - the main reason why embryos fail to implant in the womb.

But other factors also affect whether an embryo will implant: around a third of embryos with the correct number of chromosomes also fail to lead to a pregnancy when transferred to the womb.

Intriguingly, scientists have recently found that many of these apparently healthy embryos have something in common: they have increased levels of the DNA that is found within mitochondria - the tiny energy-generating structures that sit inside cells. The discovery, scientists say, offers a new tool for genetically screening embryos with the technique, known as mitochondrial DNA quantification, recently made available in the US.

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