of embryos (Bousquet et al., 1999). The improvement in pregnancy rates caused by

culture with IGF-1 resulted in a pregnancy rate at day 45 for embryo recipients in the hot

season of 41.8% (28/67). This pregnancy rate is much higher than the pregnancy rates of

14-19% in two previous studies evaluating the effectiveness of in vitro embryo transfer in

the summer (Ambrose et al., 1999; Al-Katanani et al., 2002). This result suggests that

addition of IGF-1 to embryo culture can improve the effectiveness of in-vitro embryo

transfer in the summer when compared to artificial insemination and result in pregnancy

rates comparable to those achieved using artificial insemination in cool weather.


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