Sir,
In February 2004, the Italian Parliament approved a law (namely 40/2004) regulating assisted reproduction technology (
Benagiano and Gianaroli, 2004). This law imposed many limitations on Italian reproductive specialists. The most important of these restrictions was the provision that no more than three oocytes could be fertilized at one time during an IVF treatment, since all embryos obtained had to be transferred simultaneously. On May 2009, the Italian Constitutional Court outlawed some restrictions set out in the 40/2004 law (
Benagiano and Gianaroli, 2010). The most important point of the ruling is that embryo protection is limited by the imperative to ensure a concrete possibility to achieve a successful pregnancy. The Court also strongly reaffirmed the supremacy of the physician's judgment in carrying out a full evaluation and a personalized treatment plan for each woman and couple. Therefore, Italian reproductive specialists can now define an individualized optimal number of embryos to give the best chance of achieving a pregnancy while limiting the number of cryopreserved embryos.
The recently published article by
Levi Setti et al. (2010) reported a retrospective analysis of 3274 IVF cycles, comparing fresh cycles before and after the 40/2004 law was modified. No significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of patients’ age, basal FSH levels, years of infertility, number of previous cycles or number of oocytes retrieved. Conversely, the number of oocytes used, the number of embryos obtained and transferred were significantly higher after the Court modifications. The most striking results were an increase of pregnancy rate per started cycle in the post law-change group (20.42% before versus 23.49% afterwards, thus a 15% difference), and a trend towards a reduction in the number of triplet pregnancies (from 2.46 to 1.68%).
Our centre manages ∼250 infertile couples per year. Although using smaller patient numbers, we have similar results supporting their conclusion that ‘infertile Italian couples can now obtain at home in Italy improved results that are comparable with those reported in the largest international studies’. We analysed data from patients selected for IVF or ICSI between 1 June 2009 and 30 September 2010 and controls who underwent IVF or ICSI cycles prior to the law modification (1 June 2007 and 30 September 2008). All patients gave an informed consent for their clinical data to be used for statistical evaluations and/or research purposes. Multi-ovulation stimulation regimens were either a long GnRH agonist protocol or a flexible multi-dose GnRH antagonist protocol not differently applied in the two study periods. Before the legal changes, the best three oocytes were inseminated or injected, and all of the normally cleaved embryos were transferred. After the Constitutional Court's decision, the number of oocytes fertilized or injected was chosen on the basis of sperm quality, woman's age and number and outcome of previous cycles, according to current guidelines of the Italian Fertility Societies. The number of embryos to be transferred was agreed with the couples, taking into account woman's age, embryo quality and the number and outcomes of previous IVF treatments. Embryo morphology was scored as described elsewhere (
Veek, 1999). The embryos were transferred into the mid-cavity of the uterus under trans-abdominal ultrasound guidance 48–72 h after the oocyte retrieval. Clinical pregnancy was defined as ultrasonographic demonstration of one or more gestational sacs 4 weeks after embryo transfer (
Zegers-Hochschild et al., 2009).
Data from 531 cycles were obtained—223 in the pre- and 308 in the post-ruling period, respectively. Cancellation rate before oocyte retrieval was 13.0 and 12.3% in the two periods (
P = 0.9). Table
I shows baseline clinical characteristics of patients, biological data and clinical outcome of recruited cycles in the two periods. There were no significant differences between the cycles performed before and after the modification of the law in terms of the duration of infertility, the number of previous IVF cycles, the mean number of oocytes retrieved and the number of mature oocytes at ovum pick-up. It is noteworthy that in our cohort, women at induction after law modifications were older than those enrolled in IVF treatments before Court ruling (
P = 0.0135). Evidently, modifications of the law were associated with a significant increase of the number of oocytes used (
P < 0.001), the number of embryos obtained (
P < 0.001) and the number of embryos transferred (
P = 0.0028). As with Levi Setti's data, a significantly higher number of embryos were transferred in patients >36 years (
P = 0.0348). The number of single embryo transfers decreased in both age groups (<36 and >36 years) but not significantly so, whereas the number of transfers with two embryos increased by 5.6% in younger patients and significantly (
P = 0.0135) decreased in older patients. Moreover, in patients aged >36 years, there was a 19.6% increase in three-embryo transfers.
Table I Clinical data, biological data and clinical outcome of cycles according to study period.
In the post-ruling period, the opportunity to use more than three oocytes mirrored in a slightly lower fertilization rate, probably due to a less intensive selection of oocytes for insemination. Nevertheless, the percentage of cycles when transfer of embryos could not be performed was similar in both periods.
We observed an increase in both implantation and pregnancy rate, although not statistically significant. However, a subgroup analysis highlighted that patients aged >36 years may mainly benefit from the law changes: for these women, pregnancy rates per oocytes retrieval and per transfer were significantly higher in the second study period (
P = 0.0314 and
P = 0.0313, respectively).
The change to the law was not associated with significant differences in the proportions of single, twin and triplet pregnancies. Intriguingly, a lower rate of triplets was observed in the post-ruling period (4.3% before versus 1.3% after), which represents a relative decrease of 69.8%. In both our study and Levi Setti
et al.'s
(2010), there was a downward trend in singletons and an increased incidence of twins. Therefore, in the future, the best balance between reducing the risk of multiple gestation and maximizing the probability of pregnancy could be obtained through a longer embryo culture to blastocyst stage in order to propose single-embryo transfer to selected couples with a good prognosis.