Transporting embryos?

[Wanting a daughter]

Hi again Carole,

I recently shipped 11 vitrified embryos from Cape Town to L.A.. 9 survived the thaw but over the next couple of days they didn't do too well. There were on 4 left to biopsy by day 5. They were from a 22 yr old donor. Do you think that the shipping may have impacted them negatively?

Thanks.

[Carole]

Hi again Carole,

I recently shipped 11 vitrified embryos from Cape Town to L.A.. 9 survived the thaw but over the next couple of days they didn't do too well. There were on 4 left to biopsy by day 5. They were from a 22 yr old donor. Do you think that the shipping may have impacted them negatively?

Thanks.

Dear Wanting a Daughter,
Typically, when frozen embryos are shipped, the sending lab puts in a kind of indicator to let them know if samples thawed in transit. Sometimes it is a simple as a previously frozen indicator vial put in the tank up side down, with frozen contents suspended up-side down. If these thaw, the contents are now in the top of the up-side down vial. More high tech systems exist as well. Ask your lab whether they had any concerns about the samples during shipment. Were thaw indicators used? Did the indicators show that temperatures held throughout shipping? Most labs have protocols that require techs go through an integrity check as part of the process of checking a sample into their storage inventory. Samples are shipped in what are called "dry shippers". Dry shippers are dry because the liquid nitrogen that keeps things frozen is absorbed by the material in the shipper so there is no excess liquid to slosh around and endanger people who may come in contact with it. These shippers must be "recharged" by filling to excess (and removing excess liquid nitrogen) before each shipping event. A fully charged dry shipper should be good for days, perhaps as long as a week or more. As long as the shipper was properly charged and wasn't forgotten somewhere in transit for a long time and then quickly moved into more permanent "wet" liquid nitrogen upon arrival, it should have been okay. Because they thawed okay, there might have been more a problem with culture conditions-- use of different systems in different labs might be a source of stress for some embryos. Anyway, Good Luck. Four is not zero. Carole

[Wanting a daughter]

Thanks Carole,
Unfortunately from the four that were biopsied, there were two normal boys and as you can tell from my username...well it tells the story.

If there were no issues with temperature, could all the movement have any impact or are they really secure in a vitrified state?

[Carole]

Thanks Carole,
Unfortunately from the four that were biopsied, there were two normal boys and as you can tell from my username...well it tells the story.

If there were no issues with temperature, could all the movement have any impact or are they really secure in a vitrified state?

Hi wanting a daughter,
If embryos remain in the vitrified state, they are really really secure. It is the ultimate in suspended animation. Now, of you put them near a source of radiation, (or leave them in storage for hundreds of years exposed to background radiation levels), DNA will degrade but there is no reason to believe this happened. They are safe from most everything else. The problem with transport between labs is that sometimes the receiving lab does not know how to move the vitirified embryos from shipper to permanent storage. Since they looked OK at thaw, this is probably not the problem. Hope this helps. Carole