Here’s your IVF research roundup for August 2025. Each month, I highlight everything I’ve shared on Remembryo — including new IVF study summaries, popular social posts, answers to community questions, and a full list of research highlights with links and short summaries from my newsletter. The paywall is off for this post.
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🔗 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.
Remembryo posts
Here’s what I covered this month on Remembryo. Click any image to read more.
A 2025 study suggests that acetaminophen (Tylenol), at levels reached after a standard dose, can disrupt embryo development in experimental models, raising questions about its potential impact on IVF outcomes, although better research in humans is needed before changing clinical practice. Read more.
A large 2025 study found that a thin lining (<7 mm) lowered live birth rates in medicated and modified natural FETs, but not in natural cycles, and overall endometrial thickness was not a strong standalone predictor of IVF success. Read more.
A 2025 case report describes two IVF patients who conceived triplets from a single embryo transfer and offers insight into just how rare this is. Read more.
The Italian Society of Fertility and Sterility and Reproductive Medicine (SIFES-MR) has issued new guidelines on 28 IVF add-ons, outlining which may help in certain situations, which lack evidence, and which should be limited to research. Read more.
In a 2025 study, researchers tested a noninvasive MRI-like tool that reads an embryo’s metabolic health, accurately predicting which would stop developing and potentially helping select the healthiest for transfer. Read more.
This post explains how embryos can split during IVF, especially at the blastocyst stage. It covers the timing of splitting, the different types of identical twins, the factors that make splitting more likely, and how IVF labs can reduce the risk of twins after single embryo transfer. Read more.
Top viewed posts on social
Here you can see the top 3 most popular posts for the month on Instagram, excluding the posts from above.
- Insiders say White House has no plan to mandate IVF coverage. Trump promised during his campaign to make insurance cover IVF or have the government pay for it, but so far his administration has not taken any steps to expand access, and insiders say there are no current plans to require coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Forcing ACA plans to cover IVF could also raise premiums by several percentage points for everyone and hurt Republicans before the 2026 midterms, and one person familiar with the talks said, “It appears for now that they’re not going to go there.” Read more on The Washington Post.
- Global study shows rising rates of female infertility, gynecological conditions. A global analysis of data from 1990 to 2021 found that over 1.2 billion women of childbearing age were affected by gynecological diseases, with cases doubling over time, driven by rising rates of conditions like PCOS, fibroids, and infertility, particularly among younger women. Read more (full article)
- PGT-A shortens time to live birth for patients over 38. This retrospective cohort study found that PGT-A shortened the time to live birth in women aged 38 and older but offered no time-to-pregnancy benefit for younger patients undergoing IVF. Read more (abstract only)
And here’s the top 3 older Remembryo posts (based on Instagram story views). Click any image to read more.
A 2024 study compared cumulative live birth rates for patients aged 40 to 48, finding that increasing age led to decreasing chances of birth. Read more.
Researchers in a 2023 study found that live birth rates depend on a blastocyst's grade, and not their day 3 grade, while miscarriage rates were affected due to day 3 cell number. Read more.
A 2024 study found that working past 4 pm, specific procedures, and variability among embryologists all contribute to errors in IVF labs. Read more.
IVF in the news highlights
Each week in the Remembryo newsletter, I share short summaries of IVF-related stories that made headlines. Below are 5 leading headlines for the month, with the first two summarized:
- What a 30 year old embryo could mean for a person’s identity. A baby was recently born in the US from an embryo frozen for more than 30 years, setting a world record and showing how long term storage can extend the possibilities of IVF. In the US there is no legal limit on storage time, and the UK now allows up to 55 years, which means donors could be elderly or deceased when a child is born. This raises new questions about identity, family connections, and how people understand their place in history when there is such a long gap between conception and birth. Read more on The Conversation.
- In obese patients, weight loss before IVF linked to higher unassisted pregnancies. A meta-analysis found that women with obesity who completed structured weight loss before starting IVF were 47% more likely to have an unassisted pregnancy and 21% more likely to become pregnant overall. “Our work suggests that for many women with obesity, an intensive supported weight loss programme could help them to conceive naturally,” said Moscho Michalopoulou, lead author of the study in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Read more on Open Access Government.
- Common drug shows promise in preventing extreme morning sickness. Check out the full story on The Guardian.
- ACOG updates vaccine advice for pregnancy. Read more on Healio.
- Scientist with endometriosis uncovers immune system link. Read more on Science.
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IVF questions from the community
Here are select questions that I answered either in my Facebook group or on Reddit.
- When an embryo splits into multiples, when does it usually happen? For example, does a fully hatched Day 6 embryo have the same chance of splitting as a fully expanded but not-yet-hatched Day 4? Embryo splitting can happen during the blastocyst stage or earlier, when the ICM (or the whole embryo) divides into two. Some mechanisms make this more likely, like the 8-shaped hatching pattern where the embryo hatches in a way that separates the ICM. If the embryo is already fully hatched with a single intact ICM, that particular mechanism is less likely, but splitting can still occur internally, for example during blastocyst collapse and re-expansion, especially if the ICM is loosely organized. Read more in my post How embryos split during IVF and lead to twins.
- What’s a good thaw survival rate for embryos? Are there any factors, like embryo grade, that contribute to poor survival rates? An Italian consensus of clinicians and embryologists recently put out their key performance indicators for assessing IVF clinic quality, noting that 90% or greater thaw survival is competent, but 99% or greater is the benchmark value that labs should strive for. A 2021 study examined factors linked to euploid embryo survival after thawing and found several contributors, including the day of development (with day 7 embryos showing lower survival), fully hatched status, and poor quality.
- Has anyone had much success with human growth hormone (omnitrope)? A recent meta-analysis found that omnitrope (growth hormone) could increase the number of retrieved eggs and number of mature eggs, but had no impact on the number of fertilized eggs or live birth rate. Read more in this post Growth hormone (omnitrope) increases number of eggs retrieved in updated meta-analysis.
IVF research brief
🔒 The full research brief for the month begins below (paid subscribers only)
Each week I flag ~20 IVF studies I find most helpful. Some are covered in detail on Remembryo, but paying subscribers get short summaries and links to all of them, organized into categories like implantation, egg quality, PGT-A, etc.
Below is the full list of 90 short summaries and links for studies that weren’t featured on Remembryo (available to paying members only). Some include “Notes after review,” which explain why the study wasn’t selected for a full summary on Remembryo after reading it in detail.
🔍 Sneak peek: 3 select summaries from the month
- This literature review found that acupuncture may improve endometrial receptivity by influencing uterine blood flow, hormone levels, molecular signaling, and immune-inflammatory balance, though current studies are limited and larger randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm its role in infertility treatment. Read more (full article)
- This systematic review and meta-analysis of 151 studies on IVF in advanced maternal age patients found no clear benefit from specific stimulation protocols, gonadotropin choices, ICSI, or PGT-A, while assisted hatching was linked to lower live birth rates and multiple embryo transfer increased live births at the cost of higher multiple pregnancies. Read more (abstract only)
- A retrospective study of 13,632 donor oocyte ICSI cycles found that sperm-related factors accounted for 3.1% of all cases and 84.1% of poor fertilization events, highlighting the limitations of standard semen testing in predicting fertilization outcomes. Read more (abstract only)
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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.
