SINGAPORE – A pilot study to help women improve their chances of a successful in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) pregnancy has enrolled 590 patients as at January 2024, said Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health Rahayu Mahzam in Parliament on Feb 29.
To date, there have been 70 pregnancies under the study.
But more patients are needed for the study in order to evaluate the effectiveness of pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS), which tests for chromosomal abnormalities in pre-implanted embryos created through IVF.
Ms Rahayu was responding to a parliamentary question filed by Mr Louis Ng (Nee Soon GRC), who had asked for an update on the PGS study and when the screening can be included as a mainstream healthcare service.
The PGS pilot, which was started in 2017, compares the embryo implantation success rates, pregnancy rates and live birth rates between women who had received PGS and those who had not.
Participants must meet one of three criteria to receive PGS: They must be aged 35 or over, have at least two recurrent implantation failures, or at least two pregnancy losses.
Ms Rahayu said that only 195 patients out of the 590 patients enrolled in the study have undergone PGS. Of the 195, 131 completed their embryo transfers. This has led to 70 pregnancies, which include 56 live births and five ongoing pregnancies.
“More patients need to be recruited into the pilot for a robust evaluation of the clinical efficacy of PGS, before it can be determined if PGS should be a mainstream clinical service. In the meantime, PGS will remain accessible to eligible patients,” said Ms Rahayu.
Responding to a supplementary question on whether there is a specific number of patients that would need to undergo the study before it is concluded, Ms Rahayu said that while the Ministry of Health has worked on trying to increase enrolment numbers, not all would-be parents follow through the process for PGS.
“Because of that, we have not yet achieved that number for a good statistical reference,” she said.
Ms Rahayu also added that the ministry is reviewing whether to expand the pilot to private assisted reproduction clinics.
