Sean Lauber: 0PN Embryos in IVF, What Does the Latest Evidence Tell Us?
Sean Lauber, Healthcare newsletter writer at SmartBrief, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Researchers combined the results of 9 studies and found that embryos from 0PN zygotes had similar pregnancy outcomes to embryos from normally fertilized (2PN) zygotes, despite being less likely to develop into blastocysts.
In IVF, fertilization is confirmed by seeing two pronuclei (2PN) in the fertilized egg (zygote) a day after insemination. Because these structures are only visible briefly, some normally fertilized zygotes may be mistakenly classified as 0PN (no visible pronuclei).
Chan et al. (2026) performed a meta-analysis and combined the results of 9 studies to see how embryos from 0PN zygotes compare to normally fertilized 2PN zygotes.
They found that embryos from 0PN zygotes that reach the blastocyst stage have pregnancy outcomes similar to embryos from 2PN zygotes, although they’re less likely to develop into blastocysts in the first place.
One possible explanation is that some 0PN zygotes are actually ‘false’ 0PNs, which are normally fertilized zygotes whose pronuclei formed or disappeared outside the standard 16–18 hour fertilization check.
They also compared IVF- and ICSI-derived 0PN zygotes. Pregnancy outcomes were lower for embryos from IVF-derived 0PN zygotes, but not ICSI-derived 0PN zygotes.
This may be because IVF-derived 0PN zygotes are more likely to include embryos resulting from polyspermy (fertilization by more than one sperm), although the subgroups were smaller and this finding should be interpreted with caution, the authors note.
Check out more details on Remembryo.
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