With 1 million+ euro of funding, the EuMAR project (European monitoring of Medically Assisted Reproduction) aims to develop a prospective cycle-by-cycle platform for the collection of ART data; this hopes to conform with proposals for the revised tissue and cell directives and raise the level of quality assurance, surveillance and vigilance in European reproductive medicine.

During an extremely well attended Campus meeting in May on embryo selection in IVF the reproductive geneticist Elpida Fragouli gave two presentations on PGT-A, one on emerging non-invasive methods and a second on the wider application of aneuploidy testing in embryos. Elpida, basic science officer of the SIG, spoke to ESHRE about both these subjects, which continue to raise unresolved questions.

A 20-year study has found that parenting and child adjustment did not differ among children from gamete-donation and natural conception families from ages 3 to 20. The absence of a biological link between children and their parents appears not to affect mother–child relationships or psychological adjustment in young adulthood.

A further analysis from the ongoing Nurses’ Health Study, which last year suggested a link between irregular menstrual cycles and (obesity-related) endometrial and colorectal cancers, now extends the association to infertility itself.

A prospective study comparing outcomes in PGT-A and conventional IVF blastocysts has found that those with negative DNA amplification in blastocoel fluid had a much higher LBR per transfer than blastocysts with positive amplification. The DNA amplification of blastocoel fluid could become an ‘easy and cost-effective tool’ in embryo selection, say the authors.

A study cross-linking Swedish registries has compared adverse birth outcomes in ART-treated lesbian couples (thus without an infertility indication) with those of heterosexual couples conceiving naturally and with ART; the lesbian pregnancies had ‘more favourable’ birth outcomes.

In March ESHRE’s SIG Psychology & Counselling hosted a well-attended introductory training course on infertility counselling. High on the agenda were newly introduced digital support interventions. Mariana Sousa Leite, Junior Deputy of the SIG, reports.

A fully booked Campus meeting on embryo selection reviewed a catalogue of emerging concepts and developments in embryo selection - notably covering PGT-A, time-lapse and artificial intelligence - but behind the presentations lay an agreement that morphological assessment still sets the gold standard.

An integrated meta-analysis and gene variant study demonstrates for the first time the ‘critical role’ of excess childhood/adolescent adiposity on the pathophysiology of adult PCOS. Effective weight maintenance, even from the early years, is likely to reduce the risk.

The first comprehensive meta-analysis of PGT-A for its effect in older ART patients confirms a decline in LBR but finds that the decline occurs independently of the embryo’s ploidy status.