A new study has found an association between poor air quality and “lower success rates with an embryo transfer”
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NEED TO KNOW
- Poor air quality during the 2023 Canadian wildfires was linked to lower IVF embryo transfer success rates at one New York City fertility clinic
- Researchers suggest delaying embryo transfers during unhealthy air quality days but acknowledge the challenges of rescheduling IVF procedures
- Experts recommend minimizing exposure to pollutants like smoke and staying indoors to improve IVF success rates during poor air quality days
Poor air quality may decrease the success of an embryo transfer during the IVF process — devastating news as smoke from the Canadian wildfires blankets the air in many U.S. cities to dangerously unhealthy levels.
Researchers looked at the IVF success rates at a New York City fertility clinic when the area was hit with smoke from the 2023 Canadian wildfires, for a study in the journal Human Fertility in May. They found that when the Air Quality Index (AQI) was good (0–50), 62% of embryo transfers were successful, with 51% of pregnancies ending in a live birth. When air quality was moderate (51–100), the embryo transfer rate was 65%, but the percentage of successful births dropped to 49%.
When the AQI hit 100 or more — which is classified as “unhealthy for sensitive groups or worse” — the rate of successful transfers dropped significantly, to only 27%.
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“This was a study that looked at embryo transfer success rates based on the ambient air quality outside,” Dr. Randi Goldman, attending physician and the program director for the Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Fellowship Program at Northwell Fertility, and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “And it found an association between poorer air quality, especially when it was in the unhealthy range, and lower success rates with an embryo transfer.”
The problem, Goldman said, is not in the lab — but in the air outside: “Any good IVF lab is going to have a lot of controls in the lab to ensure good egg quality. My hypothesis is that it doesn’t have to do with the actual lab itself or the transfer itself, but more in the days leading up to it and the days after it, the person who had that embryo transfer is then exposed to these potential environmental issues leading to poorer air quality,” she explained.
The study suggests not undergoing IVF during times of poor air quality, saying, “one could consider embryo cryopreservation and deferring embryo transfer to a future date when air quality is improved. With the recent increase in extreme weather events as a result of climate change, the results of this study suggest that the impacts of air quality on fertility treatment outcomes is an avenue worthy of further investigation.”
Still, Goldman acknowledged that delaying an IVF procedure isn’t exactly an easy thing to do. “There is so much that goes into leading up to the moment or that day of having the transfer,” she said. “And truly probably not necessary to kind of kick that can to a different month because you don’t know what’s going to happen in that month. It’s time consuming. It’s costly. But you should control what you can, right?”
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If someone has an embryo transfer scheduled — and they live in an area impacted by the smoke, Goldman said to “minimize other exposures. Things like tobacco smoke, other smoking, alcohol use, try to limit those exposures as much as possible. And on days where air quality might be unhealthy … stay inside.”
Although “the $1,000,000 question” is just what, exactly, is in the air that’s causing embryo transfer rates to drop, Goldman said that “it’s hard to know exactly what pollutant it is, but inflammation in general is not good for the body. It can cause reactive oxygen stress and things that can potentially decrease health overall. And there is a direct parallel line between overall health and reproductive health.”
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