Asians have tougher time getting pregnant with IVF

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is apt to be more successful in white women than in Asian women, a study suggests.

Women of Asian descent were 29 percent less likely than their Caucasian counterparts to become pregnant after IVF, Dr. Karen Purcell of Fertility Physicians of Northern California in San Jose and her colleagues found.

Little data is available on how ethnicity affects outcome after infertility treatment, the researchers write in the journal Fertility and Sterility. To investigate, Purcell and her team looked at national U.S. data on 25,843 whites and 1,429 Asians who underwent IVF, as well as more detailed information on 370 white and 197 Asian patients treated at one clinic in San Francisco.

Asian and white women treated at the California clinic were similar in a number of factors that affect IVF outcome, such as the number of eggs retrieved per cycle, age, hormone level, and cause of male infertility. The type of treatment and dosage of hormones the women in both groups received also were similar.

Despite these similarities, the Asian women were 31 percent less likely to become pregnant and 33 percent less likely to deliver a live infant than white women.

Full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070309/hl_nm/asians_ivf_dc

Category: IVF