Intramuscular injection of human chorionic gonadotropin as luteal phase support in artificial cycle frozen-thawed embryo transfer does not improve clinical outcomes: a parallel, open-label randomized trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin).

The current study was aim to compare the clinical outcomes after frozen-thawed embryo transfer (FET) treated with artificial cycles (AC) between women who were administered intramuscular injection of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) as luteal phase support and the routine group.

Why It Was Studied

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) as one of the first signals secreted by the embryo to the mother may have a direct effect on the endometrium at implantation.

Who Took Part

The study group was 245 women.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were children, women only.

A randomized controlled trial of 245 women was conducted at the Assisted Reproduction Center, Northwest Women's and Children's Hospital, Xi'an, China from January 2019 to January 2020.

Women <40 years of age undergoing their first FET treated with AC were included.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) group a baseline to be compared against.

Clinical outcomes of the two groups were analyzed.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Luteal Phase, Premature Birth, Chorionic Gonadotropin and Embryo Transfer.

Author keywords: artificial cycle, frozen embryo transfer, intramuscular injection of hCG, ongoing pregnancy rate and randomized controlled trial.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in 245 women.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2023 (Frontiers in endocrinology), a journal based in Switzerland.

More context: the hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) compound page, all human trials.