Preimplantation genetic diagnosis for aneuploidy and translocations using array comparative genomic hybridization

At least 50% of human embryos are abnormal, and that increases to 80% in women 40 years or older. These abnormalities result in low implantation rates in embryos transferred during in vitro fertilization procedures, from 30% in women <35 years to 6% in women 40 years or older. Thus selecting normal embryos for transfer should improve pregnancy results. The genetic analysis of embryos is called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and for chromosome analysis it was first performed using FISH with up to 12 probes analyzed simultaneously on single cells. However, suboptimal utilization of the technique and the complexity of fixing single cells produced conflicting results. PGD has been invigorated by the introduction of microarray testing which allows for the analysis of all 24 chromosome types in one test, without the need of cell fixation, and with staggering redundancy, making the test much more robust and reliable. Recent data published and presented at scientific meetings has been suggestive of increased implantation rates and pregnancy rates following microarray testing, improvements in outcome that have been predicted for quite some time. By using markers that cover most of the genome, not only aneuploidy can be detected in single cells but also translocations. Our validation results indicate that array CGH has a 6Mb resolution in single cells, and thus the majority of translocations can be analyzed since this is also the limit of karyotyping. Even for translocations with smaller exchanged fragments, provided that three out of the four fragments are above 6Mb, the translocation can be detected.