Alice Fernandes Pinto Fertilidade Feminina: O Tabagismo e a ...

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abstract
Smoking Habits, Cotinine, Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Reproductive health is an important issue for continuity of life. The evaluation of
female reproductive health is relevant, due to a wide range of women exposed
to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS). This fact may impair their fertility. The
purpose of the present study was to determine cotinine levels within follicular
fluid (FF), in order to establish some relationships with different biological and
clinical parameters of an in vitro fertilization program.
For this purpose, 78 couples were studied. Groups were made according to
women’s smoking habits, identified through an interview: non-smokers (NS;
n=35); passive smokers (PS; n=32); and active smokers (AS; n=11). FF
samples were obtained from the dominant follicle, which was isolated in order
to keep them free of blood contamination. Cotinine levels were evaluated by
ELISA, using a suitable commercial kit. Taking in account the different groups,
biological and clinical parameters were further analysed.
A strong correlation between the levels of cotinine in FF and self reported ETS
was found. In AS, the level was significantly greater than in other groups
(P0.05) on the different biological parameters
were noted among NS, PS and AS women, respectively: mean number of
retrieved oocytes (7.5±4.0, 8.3±4.9, 8.1±4.3; fertilization rate (70.3%, 69.2%,
58.3%), and percentage of high-quality embryos (82.5%, 85.2%, 75.0%).
In relation to clinical parameters, AS evidenced a tendency to a lower clinical
pregnancy rate (27.3%) when compared to PS (46.9%) and NS (51.4%). This
tendency was also noted in implantation rate (20.0%, 32.0%, 30.1%,
respectively), although no statistical differences were found (P>0.05) in both
results.
Our study proved that cotinine in follicular fluid are suitable biological marker for
the validation of smoking habits. However, a statistical significant influence of
smoking habits in IVF parameters was not observed in the present study,
alerting for other topics on fertility treatment outcomes.