Assessment of Brown Oocytes and Its Impact on Infertility Outcome

Abstract

Impaired fertility is the failure to conceive even after trying naturally for 1 year and is a significant problem of humanity today. In vitro fertilization (IVF) is one of the effective and frequently used assisted reproductive technology (ART) techniques to treat infertility. The female gamete, that is, the oocyte, plays a critical role in analyzing embryo competence; hence, the IVF results and abnormality in the morphological features of oocytes may have an impact on IVF outcomes. Among many such abnormalities, brown oocytes are one of them, that is, oocytes having dark cytoplasm and thick zona. Aim: To determine the effect of brown oocytes on IVF outcome. Settings and design: In the present study, two groups were taken, each having 76 patients. Group 1 contained patients having brown and mixed cohorts of oocytes, while group 2 contained controls, that is, fair oocyte quality. Materials and methods: A prospective case-control study was conducted on patients undergoing IVF at Ridge IVF Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, India, from June 2022 to March 2023. Seventy-six patients were taken in each group, with ages between 25 and 40 years. To neutralize the male factor, only those patients were included in the study whose male partners were normozoospermic. All patients underwent the standard gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist protocol followed by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Results: The results showed that patients with brown oocytes and in the higher age-group had a negative impact on IVF outcomes as well as on embryo grades. A trend was also observed between high basal follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) levels and brown oocytes, but no significance could be drawn. Preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) was also conducted in a few patients with brown oocytes, but no conclusion could be drawn due to the low sample size.