Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) and National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) yesterday announced a collaborative research finding involving cytokines secreted from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which improves the rate of success of embryo implantations.
The finding is expected to increase the chances that women undergoing assisted reproductive procedures will conceive.
The need for this research is highlighted by the case of a 40-year-old woman who tried in vitro fertilization procedures 10 times and underwent a preimplantation genetic diagnosis, but still failed to conceive, the researchers said.
The woman later visited TVGH for a uterine dilation and curettage procedure — a surgical procedure in which the cervix is dilated and a special instrument is used to scrape the endometrium — and gave birth to twin boys.
A research team at TVGH in 2013 discovered that uterine dilation and curettage procedures can increase the success rate of assisted reproductive technology by about 1.6 times, because MSCs from the bone marrow move toward the wound on the uterine lining after the curettage, and the secretion from the MSCs can activate the embryo and improve an implantation’s success rate.
TVGH Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility director Lee Hsin-yang (李新揚) and NTUH Department of Internal Medicine professor Jou Tzuu-shuh (周祖述) investigated the secretion to identify the cytokines and how they improve implantation.
Embryo implantation is a complicated process, as the blastula — an embryo at the early stage of development, when it is a hollow ball of cells — will only activate when it nears the uterine lining and becomes implanted in it, and the regulation mechanism needed to be further explored, Lee sid.
The team took two years to discover that cytokines secreted from MSCs function similarly to the cytokines that are secreted from the endometrial stromal cells about seven days after ovulation, which increases the mobility of the trophoblast cells that form the outer layer of a blastocyst, he said.
Lee said they hope that the cytokines secreted from MSCs or endometrial stromal cells can be used to produce medicine.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching