2006 ART Report Section 4—ART Cycles Using Donor Eggs

As shown in Figures 14–16, eggs produced by women in older age groups form embryos that are less likely to implant and more likely to result in miscarriage if they do implant. As a result, ART using donor eggs is much more common among older women than among younger women. Donor eggs or embryos were used in approximately 12% of all ART cycles carried out in 2006 (16,976 cycles). Figure 44 shows the percentage of ART cycles using donor eggs in 2006 according to the woman’s age. Few women younger than age 39 used donor eggs; however, the percentage of cycles carried out with donor eggs increased sharply starting at age 39. Among women older than age 47, for example, about 89% of all ART cycles used donor eggs.

Figure 45 compares percentages of transfers resulting in live births for ART cycles using fresh  embryos from donor eggs with those for ART cycles using a woman’s own eggs, among women of different ages. The likelihood of a fertilized egg implanting is related to the age of the woman who  produced the egg. Thus, the percentage of transfers resulting in live births for cycles using embryos from women’s own eggs declines as women get older. In contrast, since egg donors are typically in their 20s or early 30s, the percentage of transfers resulting in live births for cycles using embryos from donor eggs remained consistently high at above 40%.

Figure 46 shows percentages of transfers resulting in live births and singleton live births for ART cycles using fresh embryos from donor eggs among women of different ages. For all ages, the percentage of transfers resulting in singleton live births (average 33%) was lower than the percentage of transfers resulting in live births (average 54%). Singleton live births are an important measure of success because they have a much lower risk than multiple-infant births for adverse infant health outcomes, including prematurity, low birth weight, disability, and death.

Multiple-infant births are associated with greater problems for both mothers and infants, including higher rates of caesarean section, prematurity, low birth weight, and infant disability or death.

Part A of Figure 47 shows that among the 6,315 pregnancies that resulted from ART cycles using fresh embryos from donor eggs, about 54% were singleton pregnancies, about 37% were twins, and nearly 4% were triplets or more. About 5% of pregnancies ended in miscarriage before the number of fetuses could be accurately determined. Therefore, the percentage of pregnancies with more than one fetus might have been higher than what was reported (about 41%).

In 2006, 5,393 pregnancies from ART cycles that used fresh embryos from donor eggs resulted in live births. Part B of Figure 47 shows that 39% of these live births produced more than one infant. This compares with a multiple-infant birth rate of slightly more than 3% in the general population.

Although the total rates for multiples were similar for pregnancies and live births, there were more triplet-or-more pregnancies than births. Triplet-or-more pregnancies may be reduced to twins or singletons by the time of birth. This can happen naturally (e.g., fetal death), or a woman and her doctor may decide to reduce the number of fetuses using a procedure called multifetal pregnancy reduction. CDC does not collect information on multifetal pregnancy reductions.

Figure 48 shows that the success rates resulting from the transfer of frozen donor embryos were substantially lower than the success rates resulting from the transfer of fresh donor embryos. This is similar to the findings for frozen nondonor embryos (see Figure 42). The average number of embryos transferred was similar for cycles using frozen donor embryos and those using fresh donor embryos. (See the national summary table for information on the average number of embryos transferred for these cycles.)