Reanalysis of human blastocysts with different molecular genetic screening platforms reveals significant discordance in ploidy status

Abstract

The objective of this study is to determine mosaicism and its effect on blastocysts; abnormal blastocysts determined by molecular testing were sequentially biopsied and retested. We re-biopsied 37 blastocyst-stage abnormal embryos from eight patients, which were reanalyzed to determine the level of concordance between biopsies and inter-laboratory congruence between reputable commercial PGS laboratories. The main outcome measures were intra-embryo variation between sequential embryo biopsies and inter-laboratory variation between two PGS laboratories. The compatibility between both aCGH and NGS was found to be 11 % (3/27). Importantly, 9/27 (33 %) of embryos originally reported to be aneuploid, upon repeat assessment, were found to be euploid. The concurrence for SNP array and NGS was 50 % (3/6), and 17 % (1/6) of these abnormal embryos tested normal upon re-evaluation with NGS. NGS resulted 41 % (11/27) normal results when 27 of CGH abnormal embryos were retested. Concordance between aCGH and NGS was 4 % (1/27) whereas in three instances, gender discrepancy was observed with NGS when aCGH abnormal embryos were reanalyzed. The results of these studies reinforce the prevalence of inconsistencies during PGS evaluation of trophectoderm biopsies possibly due to variations in platform sensitivity and heightening concerns over the clinical tractability of such technology in human ARTs..