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A team of British scientists for the first time used a new technique successful fertilization "test" to better predict what a woman's eggs are the most prone to pregnancy, reported Monday a major expert in fertility.


The treatment combines antenatal checks currently in use with a new computer program that can detect defects in the eggs with chromosomes that are likely to lead to a spontaneous abortion.

The first patient, a 41-year-old British woman in 13 who had failed fertility treatment, is currently pregnant, the researchers reported.


The ultimate goal is to more multiple births and fewer pregnancies and spontaneous abortions, said Simon Fishel, director of CAREfertility, the clinic who developed the technique.

"We will go slowly with technology because we do not want to create (false) expectations," Fishel said at a press conference. "The Holy Grail is to achieve a pregnancy with an embryo," he said,


More than 3.5 million babies born worldwide through assisted reproductive technology since July 25, 1978, when two British doctors brought the world to the first "test tube baby, Louise Brown.

That number is growing rapidly because more and more women are waiting longer to be mothers and increasingly couples can go to a treatment of in vitro fertilization, or IVF. Most of them are women between 30 and 39 years.


The technique involves removing the eggs from the ovaries of a woman and combined with sperm in the laboratory. Doctors then pick the best embryos, usually one or two, and implanted into the female womb.

The challenge is to choose the best embryo, said Fishel, who was part of the team that brought the world to Brown.


Currently, doctors often use a microscope to select an embryo with the best way, rather than check their DNA, Fishel said.

"Now we can see all the chromosomes of an embryo in real time and can apply for a fresh embryo after watching their chromosomes," said the expert.


Fishel's team, which refined a technique to detect problems in complex chromosomes, took a sample of a small polar body called the egg, which contains half the chromosomes of the egg but is not part of the process of fertilization.

Researchers used a new computer program to find that two of nine eggs of women in the IVF treatment had failed 13 times were good candidates for a pregnancy.


The patient, who wants to remain anonymous, is entering the last two months of gestation.

"Although they are in a very early stage, this technique would offer a new diagnostic and therapeutic hope for couples who suffer from repeated failure of implantation (embryo) through IVF," said Stuart Lavery, director of IVF at Hammersmith Hospital London.