A retrospective cohort study has found no significant relationship between the ploidy status of IVF embryos and BMI, suggesting that an explanation for lower birth rates in obese patients lies elsewhere. This is the first report of another new writer recruit for Focus on Reproduction, Georgios Sigalos from Athens.*

After 25 years of controversy, and as the protagonists of a debate at our Best of ASRM & ESHRE meeting implied, consensus on the applicability of PGT-A for everyone seems as remote as ever. Efthymia Constantinou, Junior Deputy of ESHRE’s SIG Reproductive Genetics, offers her opinion from the IVF lab.

The menu of debates, back-to-back reviews and cutting-edge lectures to explore emerging themes continued on the second day of this Best of ASRM & ESHRE online meeting. Among themes explored were the emerging technique of double stimulation in predicted poor responders in IVF and the ever present conundrum of testing for aneuploidy in all patients.

Birth rates in some Mediterranean countries have fallen dramatically in the first months of 2021, prompting speculation that ever-shrinking fecundity might signal economic hardship ahead. Can IVF help?

A three-part report from international leaders in the medicine of early pregnancy calls for more consistency and focus in the diagnosis, investigation, treatment and management of miscarriage.

A single-centre RCT involving more than 200 couples found ongoing pregnancy rate ‘significantly lower’ in the freeze-all group than in those following a conventional approach. Alessia Galimberti, one of our newly recruited writers, reports.*

Almost 2000 members of ESHRE and ASRM (as well as many non-members) were registered for this seventh joint meeting of the two societies - indeed more attending virtually than had ever attended live.

A randomised trial has confirmed earlier cohort study findings that septum resection in women with a septate uterus and a history of subfertility has no advantages over expectant management in improving live birth rates. Is there now any rationale behind surgery, ask the authors?

On this third day of the Best of ASRM & ESHRE meeting the question of preconception factors associated with severe male factor was raised with new data from human and mouse models, while a debate on embryo transfer explored the preference, if any, of blastocyst over cleavage-stage transfer.

The largest study of its kind reveals a ‘valuable’ sperm count threshold for the best chance of success in IUI, but warns that declines in pregnancy rate below this value are gradual and continuous.