Post-thaw culture in presence of insulin-like growth factor I improves the quality of XXXX cryopreserved embryos.

@entity4208 @entity1568 @entity291
The goal of this study was to examine the effect of insulin-like growth factor I ( @entity4208 ; added during post-thaw culture (48 h)) on the preimplantation viability and quality of cryopreserved @entity291 in vivo recovered embryos. The morula stage embryos, non-surgically recovered from superovulated dairy @entity291 of Czech Fleckvieh @entity291 breed, had previously been cryopreserved by a slow freezing technique and stored in liquid @entity1568 since 1989-1990. Following thawing, the embryos were cultured for 48 h either alone (no @entity4208 ) or in the presence of @entity4208 (10 or 100 ng/ml); non-cultured embryos served as a control. Thereafter, the embryos were analyzed for cleavage to the blastocyst stage, apoptosis (TUNEL), embryo cell number and quality of actin cytoskeleton. Following post-thaw culture 41% of embryos developed to advanced blastocysts. @entity4208 increased this per cent and, at a higher dose, essentially reduced the per cent of degenerated embryos. In cultured embryos, @entity4208 at both doses elevated the cell number compared with non-cultured embryos. However, in comparison with embryos cultured without @entity4208 , only the higher @entity4208 dose resulted in elevating the embryo cell number. The TUNEL index was significantly lowered by @entity4208 treatment. Thawed embryos were mostly of the grade III actin type and fewer (12%) had grade II actin, whilst no grade I actin embryos were noted. The addition of @entity4208 resulted in the appearance of grade I actin embryos (8.33 and 6.9% for 10 and 100 ng/ml, respectively). These observations indicate that the addition of @entity4208 during post-thaw culture can improve the quality of @entity291 cryopreserved embryos.
