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Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Based Developmental Toxicity Assays for Chemical Safety Screening and Systems Biology Data Generation
Published on: June 17, 2015
Double-quality control reveals high-level toxicity in gloves used for operator protection in assisted reproductive
Sylvie Lierman1, Petra De Sutter, Marc Dhont
1Infertility Centre, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium. Sylvie.lierman@ugent.be
Objective:
To submit different glove brands to double-quality control tests using mouse embryo assay (MEA) and the human sperm motility assay (HuSMA). Operator protection against infectious body fluid contamination is a safety issue in assisted reproductive technology (ART). When using gloves in the ART laboratory, toxic substances can be transmitted to culture media, even during brief contact.
Design:
Quality control study of gloves in ART.
Setting:
University hospital-based infertility center.
Animal(S):
Seven- to 8-week-old female B6D2F1 hybrid mice.
Intervention(S):
We tested two surgical, two cleanroom, and six examination glove brands. Only gloves brands that passed both HuSMA and MEA were submitted to further QC using zona-free and/or cryopreserved MEA.
Main Outcome Measure(S):
Sperm motility index, two-cell and blastocyst development, blastocyst total cell number.
Result(S):
Quality control by MEA and HuSMA identified two glove brands to be nontoxic.
Conclusion(S):
Our study shows that gloves used in ART can be toxic and should be tested as part of an ongoing quality control program.
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