Follicular Fluid Vanin-1 Levels in Patients Undergoing Ivf: A Preliminary Study

TL;DR

This study explores follicular fluid vanin-1 levels in IVF patients and suggests they may help predict IVF outcomes.

Contribution

The study is the first to investigate follicular fluid vanin-1 as a potential biomarker for IVF success.

Findings

Vanin-1 is detectable in follicular fluid and not significantly related to maternal serum levels.

Higher follicular fluid vanin-1 levels are associated with non-pregnancy outcomes in IVF.

The follicular fluid to serum vanin-1 ratio correlates with BMI, AMH, and estradiol levels.

Abstract

This preliminary study was designed to determine follicular fluid (FF) vanin-1 levels, to assess their relation to serum vanin-1 and to reveal their potential to predict the outcome of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Eighteen unselected, consecutive women undergoing IVF were included. Serum and pooled FF samples were obtained simultaneously during routine IVF procedures. Vanin-1 levels were measured by using commercially available ELISA kits. As most of the values were below 0.6 ng/mL, the data are given as optical density. It was found that vanin-1 can be detected in FF and that it is not significantly related to its maternal serum levels (p = 0.06). FF vanin-1 levels proved to be higher in non-pregnant as compared to pregnant women (p < 0.04). There are significant positive relationships between the FF to serum vanin-1 ratio and body mass index (BMI, p < 0.02), anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH, p < 0.02) and baseline serum estradiol (p < 0.01). Moreover, the FF/serum vanin-1 ratio tended to increase with cumulative FSH dose, but this increase did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.064). It may be concluded that FF vanin-1 may serve as a biomarker to predict IVF outcome. To confirm this contention, further studies are to be performed.

Figures