Top 5 IVF studies of 2024

Let’s take a look at the top 5 IVF studies from 2024!

These are the top 5 posts that got the most engagement on social media or the most page views here on Remembryo.

These are summaries of the posts — if you want to read the full post, you can click on the picture or scroll to the end of the summary to get the link.

⚠️ Remembryo summarizes and interprets IVF research for educational purposes. Posts highlight selected findings and may simplify or omit study details, including methods, analyses, author interpretations, limitations, and protocol specifics (such as timing, dosing, or eligibility criteria). These summaries are not a substitute for the original study. Always review the full publication before treatment decisions.

🔗 Original studies are referenced in this post or within the linked Remembryo posts.

💡 Reminder: Terms underlined with a dotted black line are linked to glossary entries. Clicking these does not count toward your paywall limit.

Table of Contents

CoQ10 and other supplements improve IVF outcomes in women with ovarian aging

A recent study found that supplements improved IVF outcomes in women with ovarian aging, especially CoQ10.

Ovarian aging refers to the decline in the number and quality of a woman’s eggs as she ages. In younger women, this can cause diminished ovarian reserve or premature ovarian insufficiency that can lead to fertility problems.

Shang et al. (2024) performed a meta-analysis and combined the results of 20 RCTs that investigated the use of antioxidant supplements in women with ovarian aging. These supplements mainly included CoQ10, melatonin, myo-inositol and different vitamins.

Overall, women that used supplements showed increases in clinical pregnancy rates, but not live birth or miscarriage rates. They also found an increase in the number of eggs retrieved and number of high quality embryos.

When they looked at the individual supplements, they only found a benefit with CoQ10 on pregnancy rates and the number of eggs retrieved, and only in patients who took a low dose for at least 3 months.

Melatonin increased the number of high quality embryos, but only at lower doses and for 1 month or less.

The researchers note that the quality of evidence was low in some cases, with substantial variability in the results (heterogeneity) and small sample sizes. Larger and better designed studies are needed to draw conclusions on the benefit of antioxidants for women with ovarian aging.

You can read my full summary of this post here.

Nearly half of unexplained infertility patients have endometriosis

A 2024 study combined studies involving unexplained infertility patients and endometriosis, finding that nearly half of them have the condition.

Unexplained infertility occurs when no specific cause of infertility is identified after initial diagnostic tests on both partners.

These patients could have endometriosis, but diagnosis requires a surgical procedure called laparoscopy, which isn’t typically included as part of the initial evaluation.

Van Gestel et al. (2024) combined the results of 11 studies that reported on endometriosis in unexplained infertility patients that had laparoscopy. They found that 44% of them had endometriosis.

Most of the unexplained infertility patients had minimal/mild endometriosis, with some showing tubal factors or pelvic adhesions after laparoscopy.

Due to the high rate of endometriosis in unexplained infertility patients seen here, the authors state that laparoscopy should be considered for those with pain symptoms that suggest endometriosis.

Why not laparoscopy routinely for everyone with unexplained infertility? This has been discussed by different organizations, like ASRM and ESHRE, who don’t routinely recommend it — mainly due to a lack of good quality evidence that shows a benefit, cost issues and risks of surgery.

For those with silent endometriosis that don’t show these symptoms, non-surgical methods can be considered to help identify endometriosis, like ReciptivaDx, miRNA tests or ultrasound/MRI.

You can read my full summary of this post here.

Antioxidants in IVF culture media leads to more blastocysts, higher live birth rates

A 2024 study found that supplementing IVF culture media with antioxidants improved fertilization, blastocyst formation rates and live birth rates for patients aged 35-40.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are highly reactive molecules that can impact egg, sperm and embryo quality. ROS are generated by cells as part of their metabolism, but they can also be found in culture media (the nourishing liquid that gametes or embryos are stored in in the lab).

ROS can be neutralized using antioxidants, and some research has shown that supplementing antioxidants in culture media can improve embryo quality.

Mizumoto et al. (2024) added antioxidants to culture media used for preparing eggs and sperm and for growing embryos.

They found that patients that used antioxidant-supplemented media had higher fertilization rates, formed more blastocysts and led to higher live birth rates. This mostly applied to patients aged 35-40.

The authors mention that aging reduces the ability of gametes to protect themselves from ROS damage. By including antioxidant supplements, this helped to neutralize ROS and protect gametes and embryos.

Although the results are promising, the authors state that more research is needed before clinical application, including studies on the long-term effects on newborns.

You can read my full summary of this post here.

More sensitive PGT-A test shows that nearly all blastocysts, fetal tissues are mosaic

A 2024 study performed a more sensitive type of PGT-A by analyzing single cells, finding that nearly all blastocysts and fetal tissue contain some level of mosaicism.

Embryos with both euploid and aneuploid cells are called mosaic, but it’s not clear how common mosaicism is in an embryo because only a few cells are sampled in the biopsy from a much larger embryo.

Zhai et al. (2024) used a more sensitive form of PGT-A to sequence up to 100 individual cells from embryos and fetuses to see how common mosaicism is.

They found that nearly all of the samples showed some level of mosaicism: 100% of blastocysts, 96% of day 8-14 post-implantation embryos and 98% of fetal tissues (including brain, heart and kidney tissues from miscarriages).

They also found that most blastocysts showed “complementary aneuploidy,” involving a gain and complementary loss of a chromosome in cells, potentially leading to reduced detection of mosaicism with standard PGT-A methods.

At least one other study had performed similar experiments, finding that most blastocysts are mosaic to some degree.

While these results are interesting, it’s important to note that this study involved single-cell sequencing on many blastocyst cells, which destroys the cells, so it can’t be used for clinical use since it would kill the embryo.

You can read my full summary of this post here.

Mosaic embryos show normal obstetric outcomes, healthy children up to 3 years old

A new study found no health problems in children born from mosaic embryos transfers, and no differences in obstetric outcomes between mosaic and euploid transfers.

PGT-A can be used to determine which embryos have the right number of chromosomes (euploids) or the wrong number (aneuploid). Mosaics are embryos that have a mix of euploid and aneuploid cells that can have intermediate success rates.

There isn’t much data on the health of children born after mosaic embryo transfers, and a new (small) study by Morales et al. (2024) wanted to fill in this gap.

In this study, the children born from mosaic transfers were an average age of about 3, with no health problems reported. Mosaicism was not detected in any of the children tested.

They also compared obstetric outcomes for mosaic and euploid embryo transfers, finding no differences in pregnancy or delivery complications, birth weights, birth defects, and more.

Prenatal testing results were also all normal after mosaic transfer, although this study was small.

A previous larger study found that 1.2% of mosaic pregnancies had prenatal testing results that were the same as the PGT-A mosaic result. This suggests that most mosaic embryos self-correct or have mosaicism that’s not detected.

You can read my full summary of this post here.

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About Embryoman

Embryoman (Sean Lauber) is a former embryologist and the founder of Remembryo, an IVF research and fertility education website. After working in an IVF lab in the US, he returned to Canada and now focuses on making fertility research more accessible. He holds a Master’s in Immunology and launched Remembryo in 2018 to help patients and professionals make sense of IVF research. Sean shares weekly study updates on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit regularly. He also answers questions on Reddit or in his private Facebook group.