A retrospective comparison of the efficiency of different assisted reproductive techniques in the horse, emphasizing the impact of maternal age.
Abstract: Advancing maternal age is known to negatively affect fertility in the horse. This age-related decrease in fertility has been linked primarily to reduced oocyte quality rather than to impaired uterine function. In the past decade, the use of ovum pick-up (OPU) and ICSI to produce foals has rapidly gaining popularity amongst sport horse breeders. However, it is not yet known how maternal age influences the efficiency of a commercial OPU-ICSI program and whether the age effect is similar to that observed for other ART in the horse. To answer this question, reproductive records of 289 mares bred by natural mating (NM), 328 mares bred by AI, 205 embryo donor mares (AI-EF-ET), and 473 mares submitted for OPU-ICSI and ET were analyzed retrospectively using a regression model to investigate the effects of maternal age and breeding technique on the likelihood of producing a viable pregnancy. The reproductive efficiency (quantified as the proportion of mares that yielded at least one Day 45 pregnancy) of the different breeding techniques NM, AI, AI-EF-ET and OPU-ICSI-ET was 63.3, 43.9, 45.8 and 37.4%, respectively (P < 0.05). However, the frequent production of multiple embryos per ICSI session (up to 10 embryos in one attempt), makes OPU-ICSI-ET as effective as AI-EF-ET when measured in terms of the mean number of Day 45 pregnant recipients per donor mare. Increasing maternal age was associated with a reduction (P < 0.05) in the reproductive efficiency of all breeding techniques (NM, AI, AI-EF-ET) except OPU-ICSI-ET (P > 0.05). In the OPU-ICSI-ET group, increasing maternal age was associated with a lower number of follicles aspirated and oocytes recovered per mare. Nevertheless, the percentage of blastocysts per injected oocyte, and post-ET likelihoods of pregnancy and pregnancy loss were not influenced by the age of the oocyte donor mare (P > 0.05).
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2019-04-08 PubMed ID: 30986613DOI: 10.1016/j.theriogenology.2019.04.010Google Scholar: Lookup
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- Journal Article
Summary
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This study investigates how maternal age in horses influences the success of various assisted reproduction techniques, and finds that while aging broadly reduces fertility across methods, it doesn’t significantly impact the ovarian pick-up (OPU) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) procedure.
Research Methodology
- The researchers carried out a retrospective analysis on reproductive records of a large sample of mares (horses).
- The studied population included mares bred through different techniques, including natural mating, artificial insemination, embryo donation, and OPU-ICSI.
- A regression model was used to investigate the impact of maternal age and the type of breeding technique on the probability of achieving a successful pregnancy.
Findings
- The study found that reproductive efficiency, measured as the percentage of mares that yielded at least one pregnancy by Day 45, varied significantly between the breeding methods. Natural mating showed the highest efficiency.
- However, when considering the mean number of pregnant recipients per donor mare, OPU-ICSI was found to be as effective as embryo donation, due to the potential to generate multiple embryos in a single procedure.
Impact of Maternal Age
- In general, older age in mares was associated with reduced fertility across all breeding techniques — except for the OPU-ICSI method.
- For OPU-ICSI, although the number of follicles aspirated and oocytes (eggs) recovered decreased with increasing maternal age, this did not significantly impact the outcomes of the procedure.
- This suggests that, unlike other breeding techniques, the success of OPU-ICSI is not directly affected by the donor’s age.
Conclusions
- In understanding the influence of aging on horse breeding efficiency, this research suggests that certain reproductive techniques, especially OPU-ICSI, hold potential advantages for older mares.
- The lower age-related impact on OPU-ICSI makes it an interesting alternative for sport horse breeders dealing with older mares whose fertility may be diminishing.
Cite This Article
APA
Cuervo-Arango J, Claes AN, Stout TA.
(2019).
A retrospective comparison of the efficiency of different assisted reproductive techniques in the horse, emphasizing the impact of maternal age.
Theriogenology, 132, 36-44.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.theriogenology.2019.04.010 Publication
Researcher Affiliations
- Department of Equine Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Electronic address: j.cuervo-arangolecina@uu.nl.
- Department of Equine Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
- Department of Equine Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
MeSH Terms
- Aging
- Animals
- Embryo, Mammalian / physiology
- Female
- Horses
- Maternal Age
- Pregnancy
- Pregnancy Rate
- Reproductive Techniques, Assisted / veterinary
- Retrospective Studies
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