Abstract
Purpose
To evaluate the relationship between serum β-human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) levels and early pregnancy outcomes in women who became pregnant using assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs).
Methods
In this study, we retrospectively analyzed 523 pregnancies after ART use, with respect to the early clinical outcomes based on the serum β-HCG levels. The significance of using serum β-HCG levels to predict outcomes in early pregnancy was evaluated by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and cutoff values of serum β-HCG.
Results
We found that elevated serum β-HCG levels resulted in decreased biochemical pregnancy rates, increased multiple rates, and decreased ongoing and ectopic pregnancy rates. The cutoff values of serum β-HCG levels for the prediction of biochemical pregnancy were 213.15 IU/L, 986.65 IU/L, and 2206.5 IU/L for singletons, multiples, and twins or triplets, respectively.
Conclusion
The serum β-HCG level 14 or 12 days after D3 or D5 embryo transfer (conducted 3 or 5 days after oocyte retrieval), respectively, predicts biochemical/clinical pregnancy and singleton/multiple pregnancy with robust sensitivity and specificity.
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Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No’s. 81871110 and 81200473), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 18ykpy09), and the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Reproductive Medicine (Grant No. 2012A061400003).
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Contributions
ZY: Project development, data collection, manuscript writing. YG: Data analysis, manuscript editing. DZ: Data collection. YBL: Data collection. LL: Data collection. YWX: Project development, manuscript editing.
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The institutional ethical board (the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University) approved this study, and owing to its retrospective nature, informed consent was waived. The authors were blinded to the identity of the individual patients and have no information about the patients corresponding to the data.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Wang, Z., Gao, Y., Zhang, D. et al. Predictive value of serum β-human chorionic gonadotropin for early pregnancy outcomes. Arch Gynecol Obstet 301, 295–302 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05388-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05388-2
Keywords
- Serum β-human chorionic gonadotropin
- Early pregnancy outcomes
- Biochemical pregnancy
- Clinical pregnancy
- Multiples