ABSTRACT

In 1978, a new era has started in the treatment of infertility by the birth of the first baby from a pregnancy achieved by in-vitro fertilization. Following this, healthy pregnancies have been achieved by assisted reproductive techniques such as in-vitro fertilization by an important percentage of the childless couples.

Despite all developments in assisted reproductive techniques, pregnancy rates haven’t increased as expected, and unfortunately the rate of implantation success of transferred embryos remained at low levels (15%). Similar to recurrent pregnancy loss in which the etiology is not clear yet and the causes are probably multifactorial, evaluation of patients with recurrent implantation failure is difficult and complex. Genetic risk factors such as genomic rearrangements in the couples and the embryo, sperm DNA damage and imprinting defects have been considered among the causes of recurrent implantation failure.

Genetic screening is an integral part of providing good medical care of patients and families receiving a diagnosis of a genetic disorder. The aim of preconceptional genetic screening is to asses the fertility, to be able to increase succes rate of infertility treatments and to detect the healthy carriers who may have a baby with the risk of fatal and/or multiple congenital anomalies. In this review, possible genetic factors associated with recurrent implantation failure are discussed in the light of the current literature.