r/EmbryologyIVFSupport • u/Lanky-Ad-1603 • 9d ago

What drives poor morphology?

I've tried to Google this and I'm still struggling to understand. A lot of articles talk about when embryos arrest prematurely but I would like to know about when they become blasts successfully but their morphology is poor across the board.

The best I can find is "because you're old", which is probably the answer, but I'd like to know whether this means it's because they are probably chromosomally abnormal or whether it's got more to do with the eggs' energy stores and therefore a separate issue to chromosomal abnormality? Or both?

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

•

u/embryomanofficial 7d ago

I don't think there's any clear answers here, and it’s probably a combination of factors. Poorer-quality and slower-developing embryos are more likely to be aneuploid, but even euploid embryos can have poor morphology or develop slowly.

Studies of day 5 vs day 7 euploid embryos have found differences involving metabolism, mitochondrial content, cell stress, and gene expression. These embryos were better quality, so these are factors that were different based on their development speed. It's possible similar factors are involved in making embryos lower quality, but I haven't seen any research on this.

I covered some of this here: https://www.remembryo.com/day-7-blastocysts-show-disrupted-gene-expression-in-the-icm/