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Outcomes of poor responders following growth hormone co-treatment with IVF/ICSI mild stimulation protocol: a retrospective cohort study

  • Gynecologic Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine
  • Published:
Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

No research has studied the effect of GH co-treatment in mild stimulation protocol for poor responders. We therefore conducted this retrospective analysis to assess the outcome of IVF/ICSI cycles after the adjunct GH use to the mild stimulation protocol in poor responders.

Methods

132 poor responders who received mild stimulation protocol at Reproductive Medicine Center of Changzheng Hospital from January 2014 to December 2016 were included in this study. Good-quality embryo rate, clinical pregnancy rate, and live birth rate were compared between the GH group (n = 61) and control group (n = 71).

Results

IVF good-quality embryo rate (68.1 versus 51.5%; P = 0.008*) and ICSI good-quality embryo rate (53.9 versus 36.7%; P = 0.045*) was significantly higher in the GH group. Though the clinical outcomes did not reach a statistically significant difference between the two groups due to the limited sample size, there was a trend of higher rate in GH group in the aspect of clinical pregnancy rate (52.4 versus 47.1%; P = 0.609) and live birth rate (35.7 versus 27.5%; P = 0.392).

Conclusion

The results suggested that the adjuvant GH treatment in mild stimulation protocol for poor responders could significantly improve good-quality embryo rate, and might therefore improve the clinical outcomes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the patients for participating in this study.

Funding

This study was supported by the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality [Grant Numbers 16DZ0500402, 1641963500].

Author information

Author notes

  1. Kun Chu and Wenjuan Pang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Reproductive Medicine Center, Second Military Medical University, Changzheng Hospital, 415 Fengyang Road, Shanghai, 200003, China

    Kun Chu, Wenjuan Pang, Ningxia Sun, Qing Zhang & Wen Li

Authors
  1. Kun Chu
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  2. Wenjuan Pang
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  3. Ningxia Sun
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  4. Qing Zhang
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  5. Wen Li
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Contributions

WL conceived and designed the experiments. KC and WP performed the experiments and analyzed the data. KC and WL wrote the main manuscript. NS and QZ prepared the tables and revised the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wen Li.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Chu, K., Pang, W., Sun, N. et al. Outcomes of poor responders following growth hormone co-treatment with IVF/ICSI mild stimulation protocol: a retrospective cohort study. Arch Gynecol Obstet 297, 1317–1321 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-018-4725-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-018-4725-5

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