Purification of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) for Intrauterine Injection

s Bioactivity Assay: number of fertilized oocytes/mouse cleaved mouse embryos reaching blastocyst (%) 1 431 103,797 15.4 0/60 1⁄4 0% 2 293 95,629 (92% recovery) 16.2 84/90 1⁄4 93% The pH before and after processing was estimated at 6.7 and 7.4 respectively. After removing the reconstituted hCG from the vial, a further rinse of the vial with media failed to detect any embryo toxicity using one-cell mouse embryos (% blast1⁄4 100). CONCLUSION(S): While hCG reconstituted in media was highly toxic to mouse embryos, purified hCG allowed a high rate of blastocyst development. Embryo toxicity was due to additional solutes in the hCG powder and possibly to contaminants introduced during processing, but not to toxicity of the vial or the rubber stopper. This simple and inexpensive technique to purify hCG should further improve the already demonstrated enhancement of embryo implantation with intrauterine injection. SUPPORT: None. Reference 1. Mansour R, Tawab N, Kamal O, El-Faissal Y, Serour A, Aboulghar M, Serour G. Intrauterine injection of human chorionic gonadotropin before embryo transfer significantly improves the implantation and pregnancy rates in in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection: a prospective randomized study. Fertil Steril 2011;96:1370–4.