Effects of Assisted Reproductive Techniques on Hu-man Placental and Neonatal Weight

Background: Use of assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs) has increased throughout the world and numbers of babies were born as a result of ARTs has reached approximately 5 million. Several studies have shown higher maternal/perinatal complica-tions and adverse outcomes in pregnancy and childbirth in ARTs compared with natural pregnancies. These outcomes may be re-lated to the reproductive technology or associated with maternal factors who undergone ARTs, which needs to be elucidated.Materials and Methods: In this study, we have compared ma-ternal pre-pregnancy BMI, maternal blood pressure (BP), neo-natal birth weight (NBW), placental weight (PW) and their ra-tion (NBW/PW) in patients who conceived naturally (C) (n=20) or conceived after transfer of fresh ICSI embryos (frICSI) (n=17) or frozen ICSI embryos (fICSI) (n=18). All the babies in all groups were delivered by cesarean surgery.Results: Our results have shown that there is no significant dif-ference in maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, Maternal BP and NBWbetween groups (P> 0.05). However the PW in control group was significantly lower than frICSI and fICSI groups (541.56± 8.47gr, 662.93 ± 20.41gr and 724.16 ± 15.67, respectively) (P<0.05). In addition the ratio of NBW/PW in control group was significantly higher than frICSI and fICSI groups (6.04 ± 0.10, 4.74 ± 0.12 and 4.46 ± 0.04, respectively) (P<0.05).Conclusion: Our results showed that embryo and maternal con-ditions can affect placentation.

Keywords:

ART , Placenta , Embryo , Maternal , ICSI