Egg collection - all eggs immature

[NewSew00]

Hi all, wondering if anyone has any advice/insight on the below?

I had my egg collection today for my first IVF cycle. It was mild IVF, so was never expecting a huge number of eggs, but was told afterwards that from 7 follicles they got 6 eggs, which I was happy with. But then the Dr came in shortly after and said that ALL eggs were immature?! I had never heard of this happening before, does anyone have any experience of this or any idea why this might have happened?

The egg collection was on day 11 of my cycle, before this I only had 7 days of Bemfola, then 4 days of Cetrotide, so I'm thinking it was done too early? My last scan was Wednesday, is this normal, to have a scan so long before egg collection (Saturday)? At this last scan one follicle was 19mm, two were 16mm and there were a few more 13mm and below. They did say today that the follicles were the right size, it's just the eggs inside were immature.

They said they would do IVM to try to mature them, but I don't believe this has a huge chance of success so I'm not holding out much hope.

(In case it's relevant, I'm 34, AMH is 11.5).

Hi @lemons44 - I did get a couple of mature eggs weirdly, but over the course of 5 cycles that's dreadful, and they were all very poor quality anyway. I got none at all in my last two cycles. It took a while to accept, but there is just something wrong with my eggs that science can't fix yet!

I know it's easier said than done but if you've only had one cycle so far please try not to worry about this issue too much yet , plenty of people seem to succeed after a failed first round - see how your next cycle goes then make a plan. Wishing you all the best luck!

Huge congratulations OP 🎉

Hi all, thank you for sharing updates, I have decided to share mine as well in case it is helpful for anyone now or in the future. I had two IVF cycles both had high number of eggs, 24 first round and 22 second round, first round I had no mature and 2nd I had 3 mature but they didn’t fertilise. The 2nd round they used double trigger and increased time from trigger to retrieval. At this point my consultant advised it was most likely I had oocyte maturation arrest (OMA), he didn’t know a lot about it but recommended egg donation as my best option.

I did a lot of research at that point and found a specialist consultant in Turkey who was doing extensive research on OMA and had some success with a certain protocol. He advised I have genetic testing first and the results came back that I had a genetic mutation called TUBB8 which stops egg from maturing. It is very rare but it gave me the answers I needed to move on to egg donation and I now have a beautiful 6 month old girl who I wouldn’t change for the world!

I wish everyone everyone success on this difficult journey xxx

@lemons44 hey I never had a mature egg in the 4 cycles I did. We tried different protocols including dual trigger but never had a good egg. At microscope they seem to be super abnormally shaped so it's not clear if they are immature or just very poor quality. Anyways that was last year and I have slowly mended my broken heart :)

@Gg120 sorry to hear you also had to go through this. What is the genetic test you have done? Interesting your have come across this research. I wonder if it's the same thing me or a lot of us have? I did a genetic test in the UK, through my fertility clinic, for a university study but nothing came out abnormal. Probably what they were testing against wasn't really broad.

Hi @Francesmalin,

I am based in Ireland and I could not get genetic testing done here so I travelled to Turkey to get it as I was desperate for answers and I felt the consultant knew the topic of OMA in depth. To be honest I wasn’t expecting anything to come from genetic test as there is no history of infertility in my family.

I am not sure of the list of genes they tested for but it definitely included TUBB8 which accounts for 30% of OMA cases according to the research. it’s most common when eggs arrest at M1 stage which the majority of mine did.

Like you I took a year to come to terms with it but once we made the decision for egg donation everything has ran so smoothly and I couldn’t be happier now. Wishing you the best of luck on your next chapter xxx

@Gg120 thanks for letting me know. This is so helpful. I gave messaged my consultant to let him know about those studies because he has been looking extensively into this topic because of me. I won't do a genetic test because it's expensive and I am saving money for egg donation but I feel I might have the same thing because my eggs were also mainly at mi stage when retrieved. The more we discover the more other women can benefit from this :)

Also like you all the women in my family are extremely fertile and I was convinced first time round so I didn't think I had any issues also because I don't have any other underlying issues

@Francesmalin yes completely agree, while it seems eggs not maturing on 2 or more IVF rounds is quite rare, it would still be great for there to be a better understanding why it happens. it would help those going through it get answers and make informed decisions! I have linked the paper the consultant in Turkey wrote on OMA in case your consultant is interested! He has written many papers but this is his most recent https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364335921_Unraveling_the_Puzzle_Oocyte_Maturation_Abnormalities_OMAS

Hi, I wanted to come back to this thread in case this helps anyone.

Sadly our second round of IVF failed, however this is due to our extreme male factor (we are using my husbands surgically extracted frozen sperm).

However with protocol changes we did manage to get more mature eggs this round!

Our first round we got 13 eggs with only 3 mature.

This time we got 16 eggs, with 13 mature.

The protocol changes made were:

• adding in LH (Luveris) as apparently some women need LH to help mature eggs
• switching from long protocol to short protocol
• having higher dose of stims (and a different brand)
• one extra day of stims than last round
• a double trigger (Ovitrelle 250 mcg and Burserelin (surprecur) 1ml triggers).

I hope this may help somebody in the future.