Significant improvements in the direction of the success of IVF pregnancies are apparently on the way --- with the University of Cambridge scientists have developed a technique that help ascertain any telltale movements within fertilised eggs before they are implanted!

With the fertilised embryos implanted after nearly three days in culture, in a ‘normal’ cycle of IVF treatment, the new technique essentially draws on the process that embryologists already follow --- that is, look for abnormalities in the eggs as an indicator of the progress of each, and gauge the chances of success of a pregnancy.

According to the research – funded by the Wellcome Trust; and published in the journal 'Nature Communications' -, the non-invasive technique that has been devised can accurately predict the likelihood that an embryo developing to the blastocyst stage – stage at day five of development – and till birth --- all from as early as two hours after fertilization!

The researchers chiefly found that fertilisation kicked off a series of pulsating movements in the cytoplasm; and these movements – which are a result of an interaction between the sperm and the egg’s cortex part, and coincide with pulsations of the fertilisation cone that is formed when the sperm and egg plasma membranes fuse to draw the sperm into the egg.

Noting that “the pattern of the movements (of the egg) is predictive of whether the embryo will have successful developments throughout the entire pregnancy,” lead researcher Prof Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz said that the new can predict “which embryo will have successful and which will not have successful pregnancy”!