Low Quality Eggs and PCOS

The current paradigm is that patients with PCOS have intrinsically poor-quality eggs. This conclusion is drawn from the observation that PCOS patients have low fecundity. However, low fecundity in these patients can also be attributed to an irregular cycle, which does not control by eggs and therefore cannot possibly reflect their properties.

Another line of evidence for the poor quality of the oocytes in IVF patients comes from IVF experience where we see that despite yielding more eggs than an average IVF patient, the percentage of excellent quality embryos is relatively low.

However, the stimulation and the respective follicular phase in these patients is usually shorter than average because a very large cohort of eggs becomes  recruited. Rapidly rising levels of  E2 pose a risk of potentially life-threatening hyperstimulation, forcing a physician’s hand to trigger earlier. As the result ,the vast majority of the oocytes have deprived of the opportunity to achieve term stimulation, similarly to very young patients.