Leukocyte immunotherapy improves live delivery rates following embryo transfer in women with at least two previous failures: a retrospective review.

PURPOSE: To determine whether leukocyte immunotherapy (LIT) could improve live delivery rate following embryo transfer (ET) in women who were not successful in prior attempts. METHODS: Paternal leukocytes were intradermally injected in some women who had failed to have a successful pregnancy following at least two prior ETs approximately two weeks prior to fresh or frozen ET and repeated at the time of the 3rd rising serum beta human chorionic gonadotropin level and at eight weeks if a pregnancy occurred. Clinical pregnancy and live pregnancy rates (PRs) were compared to those women having ETs during the same time period not receiving LIT. RESULTS: Thirty-six of 94 (38.3%) patients receiving LIT (group 1) conceived following fresh or frozen ET vs 98 of 341 (28.7%) for women not receiving LIT (group 2) (p = NS). The live delivery rate per ET cycle was 30.8% (39/94) vs 19.7% for group 2 (p = .02). For the subset of women failing despite five previous ETs 17 of 37 (45.9%) group 1 women had a clinical pregnancy vs 18 of 64 (28.1%) group 2 women (p = .07%) and live delivery rates were 35.1% (13/37) vs 15.6% (10/64) (p = .024). CONCLUSIONS: These retrospective data encourage a prospective study of LIT combined with progesterone vs controls receiving progesterone only for recalcitrant patients having ETs.