Total Antioxidant Capacity; A Potential Biomarker for Non-Invasive Sex Prediction in Culture Medium of Preimplantation Human Embryos

Objective: The presence of a sex related metabolic difference in glucose utilization and, on the other hand, different developmental kinetic rates in human preimplantation embryos, has been previously observed, however, the correlation between these two events is unknown. Oxidative stress (OS) induced by higher glucose consumption appears to be a possible cause for the delayed development rate in female embryos. We examined the correlation between glucose consumption and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) concentration in individual embryo culture media for both male and female embryos.

Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated high quality embryos from 51 patients that underwent intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) at the Royan Institute between December 2014 and September 2017. The embryos were individually cultured in G-2TM medium droplets at days 3-5 or 48 hours post PGD. We analysed the spent culture media following embryo transfer for total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and any remaining glucose concentrations through fluorometric measurement by chemiluminecence system which indirectly was used for measurement of glucose consumed by embryos.

Results: The results showed that female embryos consumed more glucose which was associated with decreased TAC concentration in their culture medium compared to male embryos. The mean of glucose concentration consumed by the female embryos (30.7 ± 4.7 pmol/embryo/hour) was significantly higher than that of the male embryos (25.3 ± 3.3 pmol/embryo/hour) (P<0.001). There were significantly lower levels of TAC in the surrounding culture medium of female embryos (22.60 ± 0.19 nmol/μl) compared with male embryos (24.74 ± 0.27 nmol/μl, P<0.01).

Conclusion: This finding highlighted the utilization of sex dependent metabolic diversity between preimplantation embryos for non-invasive sex diagnosis and suggests the TAC concentration as a potential noninvasive biomarker for prediction of sex.