poor egg maturity and metformin??

[Eat-sleep-ivf-repeat]

Has anyone without PCOS been prescribed metformin and seen an improvement in egg quality in specific maturity/fertilisation rate.

I’m going for my last private cycle of ivf in April after the last cycle (october) gave us 3 blasts, one fresh round failed as did a double frozen transfer.

On review we can see my egg maturity is always quite poor

I’ve had 2 full cycles and the first got us a grade c&d blast which we did double fresh transfer and gave me my son on our first ever ivf attempt. So all of this failed attempts is new to us 🙁

Has anyone’s consultant used metformin or any other methods to improve maturity? We’ve collected around 16 eggs each time but most have been immature leaving us with 5-8 fertilised embryos. Using donor sperm which is testing really well- so they’re not the problem.

I’ve read online good things about metformin and happened to be on this my first cycle too.

Anyone have experience or suggestions?

Thankyou ❤️

[DianeArnold Partner Nurse Fertility Network UK]

Hi. Metformin won’t improve egg aquality. Women with polycystic ovaries can have an excess of insulin in their body cells. Metformin helps mop up this and allows the messages from glands in the brain, to get through to your ovaries to encourage ovulation .DHEA can sometimes help with egg quality, so perhaps ask about that. Good luck. Diane

[Eat-sleep-ivf-repeat in reply to DianeArnold]

Oh really, that’s strange there’s a lot of research on Google showing that metformin helps egg maturity.

Thankyou for your response I will have a look into dhea also 😊

[Ytrewq123 in reply to Eat-sleep-ivf-repeat]

It’s my understanding for those with insulin resistant PCOS it can help egg quality due to increasing our insulin sensitivity which in turn balances hormones and reduces the insulin’s impact on egg development!

[CarlottaD27]

hi! I have PCOS but am lean so have not been taking metformin but also asked my dr about it.

He did believe metformin could be associated with improved outcomes in patients with insulin resistance because excess insulin can impact egg development.

However, for me he then said the best thing to do was to alter my diet to be low sugar and low card and that would be as effective as taking metformin, so I’ve not ended up on it! It may be worth asking about the supplement myo-inositol too as that is apparently like metformin with fewer side effects. Good luck, it’s such a minefield! X

[Eat-sleep-ivf-repeat in reply to CarlottaD27]

Thankyou! This was really insightful 🙂 will look into that also x