The quality of eggs for artificial insemination in women could vary greatlymetabolic factorsdepend. Increasing the levels of chemicals in all human cells could boost a woman's fertility, according to new research. Additionally, this can help in selecting the best eggs for in vitro fertilization. In the world's most in-depth study of the final steps of egg maturation, researchers have found that the quality of a woman's eggs depends significantly on the important metabolic coenzyme called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+).
Professor Hayden Homer said NAD+ helps eggs retain most of their cellular building blocks as they mature. So NAD + is a critical coenzyme that is found in every cell of the body and is involved in hundreds of metabolic processes. However, levels can decrease with age. In addition, the quality of the egg cell can decline relatively early after the age of 30. This makes it increasingly difficult to get pregnant through artificial insemination and at all.
However, if women can maintain consistent levels, they have better chances of becoming pregnant both naturally and through artificial insemination. Professor Homer claims more and more women are having to resort to IVF due to delays in childbirth. Around four percent of all children born in Australia are the result of IVF. That's the equivalent of one child in an average-sized classroom.
However, the success rate of this method drops significantly from 35 percent in patients under 30 to only eight percent in women over 40. However, a quarter of Australian women undergoing IVF are over 40 years old. Professor Homer's research team made the discovery by studying the movement of spindles. This pulls apart the structure of the chromosomes in living eggs that mature. The four-year project consisted of high-resolution time-lapse imaging of live eggs without the NAD+ biosynthetic enzyme Nampt. They tracked the speed of the spindles in the final stages of egg maturation. It found that a NAD+-dependent speed boost is needed to prevent the egg from losing too much of its building blocks. With the advancement of technology, researchers are becoming throughthis studythe selection of the best eggs for artificial insemination and improving the quality can come closer.
