Clinical outcome of intrauterine administration of peripheral mononuclear cells or human chorionic gonadotropin in unexplained implantation failure

Problem Intrauterine administration of autologous peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) or human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) has been proposed to facilitate embryo implantation, while its effect on clinical outcome of women with previous implantation failure (RIF) in frozen/thawed embryo transfer (FET) cycles is still unclear. Method of study A total 523 patients having not experienced successful clinical pregnancy were enrolled in our study, including 207 repeat implantation failure (RIF) patients, and 316 patients with previous implantation failures but failed to meet the diagnostic criteria for RIF (non-RIF). Autologous PBMCs were cultured with hCG for 4 h in the hCG-activated PBMC-treated group (n = 73 in RIF patients, n = 112 in non-RIF patients), and then intrauterine administered 2 days before FET. In the hCG-treated group (n = 67 in RIF patients, n = 100 in non-RIF patients), recombinant hCG was administered 2 days before FET. The control group (n = 67 in RIF patients, n = 104 in non-RIF patients) underwent FET without intrauterine administration. Results In RIF patients, the clinical pregnancy rate of the above three groups are 56.16%, 53.73%, and 43.28%, respectively (p = .276). The implantation rate and live birth rate showed no significant differences (p > .05). For non-RIF patients, higher clinical pregnancy rate was also seen in PBMC intrauterine group (57.15%) and hCG intrauterine group (58.00%) than controls (50.96%) but without statistical significance. There were no significant differences of implantation rate and live birth rate (p > .05). Conclusion Intrauterine administration of hCG-activated PBMC and hCG did not improve clinical outcomes for both RIF and non-RIF patients before FET embryo transfer.