Every year, tens of thousands of young women opt to freeze their eggs. This procedure can be costly and at times painful, with numbers rising as more Americans delay childbirth.
However, many uncertainties surround the process: What is the optimal donor age for egg freezing? What are the success rates? And importantly, how long can frozen eggs remain viable?
Finding reliable answers to these questions is challenging. During the significant downsizing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Trump administration disbanded a federal research team dedicated to collecting and analyzing data from fertility clinics aimed at enhancing outcomes.
According to Aaron Levine, a professor at Georgia Tech’s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter School of Public Policy, who collaborated with the CDC team on research, the dismissal of the six team members was “a real, serious loss.”
“They held the most extensive data on fertility clinics, focused on ensuring truthfulness in patient advertising,” stated Barbara Collura, CEO of the National Infertility Association.
Collura emphasized that losing the CDC team is a significant blow to both couples facing infertility and women contemplating egg freezing.
These layoffs come amidst rising political interest in declining U.S. fertility rates. President Trump has dubbed himself the “infertile president” and signed an executive order aimed at expanding access to in vitro fertilization.
“The White House is committed to IVF and remains focused on it,” Collura noted.
With one in seven married or unmarried women experiencing infertility, she remarked, “Looking at these statistics, it’s disheartening—and not surprising—that our public health agencies have chosen to sidestep this issue.”
When asked about the team’s elimination, a health and welfare spokesperson commented that the administration is “in the planning stage” of transitioning maternal health programs to a new Healthy America initiative, offering no further details.
The scientists from the National Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance System were working to address numerous questions surrounding IVF research.
“We lack comprehensive data on the success rates of egg freezing for personal use because it’s relatively new and tricky to track,” Dr. Levine explained.
This uncertainty weighs heavily on women wishing to have children. Simeonne Bookal, who collaborates with Collura at Resolve, froze her eggs in 2018 while waiting to find the right partner.
She got engaged earlier this year, with her wedding scheduled for next spring. At 38, she expressed that having her eggs banked offers her a “security blanket.”
Though she still has reservations about her chances of conceiving, the frozen eggs provide her some assurance.
The precise success rate of the egg freezing procedure remains ambiguous, as many published studies are based on theoretical models that utilize data from infertile patients or egg donors, which differ significantly from women preserving their eggs for future use.
Some studies provide limited insights, often involving fewer than 1,000 women who thaw their eggs and undergo IVF, according to Dr. Sarah Druckenmiller Cascante, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Nyu Langone and author of a recent review paper on this topic.
“The available data is scant, and it’s crucial to be transparent with patients about this,” she said.
“I wouldn’t regard it as a guaranteed insurance policy. While it could lead to a baby, it’s more about improving the chances of having a biological child later in life, especially if done at a younger age.”
The CDC team maintained a database known as the National ART Surveillance System, established by Congress in 1992. This tracked success rates for various fertility clinics but now faces an uncertain future without continuous updates.
While the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology offers similar databases to researchers, they are not as comprehensive as the CDC’s since they contain data from approximately 85% of U.S. fertility clinics.
According to Sean Tipton, Chief Advocacy and Policy Officer for the American Association of Reproductive Medicine, no dedicated research team oversees the database.
The surge in women opting to bank their eggs for future use has intensified the scrutiny regarding the risks and benefits of freezing eggs.
This procedure was regarded as non-experimental as of 2012. In 2014, only 6,090 patients opted to bank their eggs for fertility preservation. Fast forward to 2022, and that number soared to 28,207, with 39,269 recorded in 2023, the latest year for which data is available.
Source: www.nytimes.com
