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Google's Schmidt to meet Cameron as tax row rages
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Government launches investigation into two Serco, G4S contracts
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EU bonus cap could hit 10 times as many London bankers
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Investors in talks to buy stake in Pirelli holding company
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Tata Steel favours EU funds to soften impact of plant closures
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Hunt for those at fault for Spain's bank crisis gains pace
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U.S. authorities seize accounts of major Bitcoin operator
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Two Fenland men among those jailed for “cynical and violent” robbery which left elderly victims traumatised
FOUR men – including two from Fenland- have been jailed for a total of 54 years for an armed robbery.
Banks lift FTSE to 5.5-year highs
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Bankers see M&A recovery after deals drop 7 pct so far in 2013
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Tax dodging take-aways in Wisbech suspected of evading VAT could owe £100,000
THREE tax dodging Wisbech take-aways who potentially owe over £100,000 were caught in a single night by a revenue task force.
Ely set to be ‘guinea pig’ in county wide survey to see how we all travel and how it can be improved
ELY is to be a guinea pig for a county wide survey to find out how people travel-and feed into a to improve their everyday journeys.
Former mayor attacks new alcohol restrictions claiming they are “ineffective and anti business”
FORMER Wisbech mayor Jonathan Farmer claims that putting the brakes on drinks licences in the town centre is “ineffective, won’t make any difference and is anti business.”
Landbeach superstore lends its support to Ely Foodbank
A LANDBEACH second hand superstore is raising funds for the Ely Foodbank tomorrow.
Rise in number of unpaid carers and young carers
"Children are picking up the caring roles the state has abandoned," The Guardian says, while The Independent says that 180,000 children work as unpaid carers.
These new figures come from the Office for National Statistics, which has pulled together data on unpaid care in England and Wales from the 2011 census.
The census (which has been carried out every 10 years since the middle of the nineteenth century) reveals an increase in the proportion of the population who are providing unpaid care.
This has risen from 11.5% in 2001 to 11.9% in 2011 in women, and from 8.8% to 9% in men. There tend to be more female carers than male, with the highest burden of care falling on the 50-64 age group for both sexes.
A related report produced by the charity The Children’s Society – based on the same data – has highlighted the issue of children acting as unpaid carers.
The charity's report describes how the census data estimated that there are around 160,000 unpaid young carers in England. It goes on to explain that this is likely to be an underestimate.
What does the ONS find about the gender of carers?
Just over half (58%) of the 5.41 million people providing some level of unpaid care in England are female and 42% are male. This higher proportion of female carers is consistent across all regions. Female carers are representative of 11.9% of the total female population of England and Wales, and male carers are representative of 9% of the male population. Ten years ago these figures were 11.5% and 8.8%.
The level of care provided was most often between one and 19 hours a week. However, 2.9% of the female population and 2% of the male population provided 50 or more hours of care a week. In 2011 in England, 9.5% of the male working population and 13.3% of the female working population were also providing some level of unpaid care. In England, 1.2% of the female population and 1% of the male population were in full-time employment at the same time as providing 50 or more hours of unpaid care. If you are a working carer, read the NHS Choices advice on combining caring with working or studying.
Links To The Headlines
180,000 children work as unpaid carers for relatives. The Independent, May 16 2013
Carers putting their own health at risk, census shows. The Daily Telegraph, May 16 2013
Children are picking up the caring roles the state has abandoned. The Guardian, May 16 2013
Young carers: Quarter of a million children provide care for others. BBC News, May 16 2013
MP Barclay one of 116 Tory MPs to support referendum on continued EU membership
MP STEVE Barclay aligned himself to the group of Tory MPs wanting a referendum on this country’s members of the European Union.
Illegal workers rounded up as police and customs officers swoop on Wisbech premises
INDIAN and Pakistani workers who had over stayed the terms of their visas and Chinese workers – one of who had entered the UK illegally- were among those arrested in Wisbech.
Meet the Cromwell's - 28th May 2013
Meet the Cromwell's
Learn about 17th Century life with our May Half-Term characters' day at Oliver Cromwell's House
Mrs Cromwell's Baking Day
Join Mrs Cromwell in the kitchen and watch her make Pippin Pies using ingredients that would have been used in 17th century cooking.
Civil War Rations
Meet one of Cromwell's soldiers and learn about the hardship of rationing during the civil war.
Location Oliver Cromwell's House 29 St Mary's St Ely CB7 4HF United Kingdom See map: Google Maps Cost:Normal admission charges apply.
Free event for Resident Pass Holders.
Contact: Ely Tourist Infrormation Centre Telephone: 01353 662062 Email: tic@eastcambs.gov.uk Website: www.visitely.org.ukTime-lapse technique may boost success rate of IVF
“IVF advance triples couples' chances of having a baby”, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The innovation in question is actually based on an old imaging technique called time-lapse photography, where a camera is set to record a series of images at regular intervals. This technology is now available for monitoring the development of IVF embryos before they are transferred into the womb.
The researchers in this study developed a way of using the information collected to identify which embryos had a low or high chance of having an abnormal number of chromosomes (called aneuploidy). Aneuploidy can reduce the chances of embryos successfully implanting and resulting in a healthy live birth.
In this study, the researchers looked back at time-lapse imaging for embryos from 69 couples who had IVF. They wanted to know if their technique correctly identified embryos which were more likely to result in a pregnancy or live birth.
The time-lapse cameras allowed the researchers to potentially ‘screen’ embryos for risk of aneuploidy. From this, they would then be able to choose the low risk embryos for implantation.
The researchers found that 73% of the embryos their assessment would have classed as low risk resulted in a pregnancy at five to six weeks, and 61% resulted in a live birth. These rates were higher compared to the overall rate for all embryos (at any risk level), where the pregnancy rate was 42% and the live birth rate was 39%. However, it is important to restate that the new system was not used to intervene, so the results are based purely on observation.
While the results are promising, the technique is still in its early stages. Further research is needed to more widely test the technique and directly compare its results to standard methods.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from CARE Fertility, an independent provider of fertility treatment and related services in the UK and Ireland. No sources of financial support were reported and the authors reported that they had no financial or commercial conflicts of interest.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal, Reproductive Biomedicine Online.
The study was well reported in the media, with BBC News coverage including an informative video to explain the technique.
However, potentially confusing figures are reported in other parts of the media.
The Times reported that the new technique “could give a 78% chance of success” while the Daily Mail reports that “Early trials show 78% of women having the test will have a healthy baby”.
The Guardian’s reporting suggests that “Doctors in Nottingham who devised the procedure say it could raise live birthrates at their clinic to 78%...” and this may be where this figure has come from.
However, this 78% figure does not come from the research paper itself, which reports that 61% of the low risk embryos successfully resulted in a live birth – not 78%.
What kind of research was this?
This study looked at whether the novel technique based on time-lapse images of IVF embryos might help select the embryos most likely to successfully produce a baby.
Until now, the researchers say that the vital decision about which IVF embryo should be selected and transferred into the mother’s womb is mainly based on between two and six observations of the developing embryo under the microscope.
To observe the embryo’s development, doctors have had to remove the culture dish containing the embryos from the very controlled environment of the incubator and place them under a microscope in the ambient air of the laboratory. This is usually only performed once a day to minimise disturbance to the embryo.
The authors of the study report that a major reason for IVF failure and miscarriage is that the implanted embryo has an abnormal number of chromosomes (aneuploidy). To accurately detect any chromosomal abnormality requires an invasive biopsy of the developing embryo, followed by genetic testing.
Currently it is not possible to reliably identify those embryos with an increased chance of aneuploidy with the normal microscopic observations of the embryo.
The current study tested a way of identifying the embryos at low risk of having abnormal numbers of chromosomal, using time-lapse imaging of the embryo. A relatively new system now allows doctors to obtain a stream of thousands of microscopic images of developing embryos (time-lapse images), without having to remove embryos from the incubator.
Using this system, the researchers previously found that embryos with an abnormal number of chromosomes take a different length of time to reach certain developmental stages than normal embryos. Based on this, they developed a method to identify those embryos at low, medium, and high risk of having an abnormal number of chromosomes.
In their current study, the researchers looked back at the results of IVF procedures where the embryos had been assessed using time-lapse imaging. They wanted to see if their method could identify those embryos which were more likely to go on to successfully implant, develop and be born.
It is important to note that the study did not actually use the method to select embryos for implantation – it only looked at what might have happened if the method had been used.
This is an appropriate first step for this type of research and, if the results are promising, the method would need to go on to be tested “for real” to select embryos, to see if it performed better than standard methods.
What did the research involve?
This study looked at the treatment outcomes for 88 embryos from 69 couples who attended the CARE Fertility clinic in Manchester between April 2011 and December 2012, and who had a known outcome from their IVF.
This meant that they knew if transfer of the embryo(s) had resulted in:
- failed implantation – where the woman had a negative pregnancy test
- clinical pregnancy – defined as the presence of a developing embryo with a heart beat at between six and eight weeks of pregnancy
- a live birth – identified through the mother completing a clinic delivery outcome form, which according to regulations is reported to the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
The researchers excluded cases where two embryos were implanted but did not both have the same outcome, as they would not be able to tell which embryo had which outcome.
The egg cells collected from the women had been fertilised using intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where a single sperm is injected directly into the egg. The fertilised eggs were then placed into the time-lapse incubator for culturing and imaging for five to six days.
The inbuilt microscope took images of the fertilised egg cell every 20 minutes. The image-analysis software recorded the precise timing of developmental events as they occurred. The embryos had been selected using standard existing methods before being transferred into the womb (that is, not using the new risk assessment method).
The researchers used this previously collected data model to assess the embryos, and grade whether the embryos were at low, medium or high risk of having an abnormal number of chromosomes. They then looked at what proportion of each of these three groups of embryos had achieved clinical pregnancy and live birth, and if this differed between the groups.
What were the basic results?
The researchers found that of the 88 embryos they assessed, 33 were at low risk for having an abnormal number of chromosomes, 51 at medium risk, and four at high risk.
Overall, 42% of the embryos successfully implanted and had a fetal heart beat at five to six weeks.
Among the low risk embryos, almost three-quarters (73%) successfully implanted and had a fetal heart beat at five to six weeks, compared to a quarter (25.5%) of medium risk embryos and no high risk embryos.
This meant that the 73% figure for low risk embryos is a relative increase of 74% compared with the rate for all embryos (42%) – what the media has translated as a ‘74% chance of successful pregnancy’.
The researchers had data on whether or not women had a live birth for 46 of the embryos (18 low risk, 26 medium risk, two high risk). The rest of the pregnancies had not reached term during the study period.
Overall, 39% of the embryo transfers resulted in a live birth. Among the low risk embryos, 61% resulted in a live birth. Among medium risk embryos, 19% resulted in live birth. None of the high risk embryos resulted in a live birth.
Therefore, the 61% figure for low risk embryos is a relative risk increase of 56% compared with the rate for all embryos (39%) – this is where media reports of the ‘increasing live birth rates to above 50%’ come from.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers say that their risk classification model using time-lapse imaging introduces a non-invasive way of selecting the embryos that are at a low risk of having an abnormal number of chromosomes. They say that this can result in higher likelihood of successful pregnancy and live birth.
Conclusion
This study reports on a new technique using ‘time-lapse imaging’ to non-invasively identify the IVF embryos least likely to have abnormal numbers of chromosomes.
An embryo having an abnormal number of chromosomes is one of the reasons IVF can be unsuccessful.
By looking back at the results of previous IVF procedures, the study showed that embryos identified as being low risk using the new method were the most likely to result in a live birth.
To date, IVF techniques rely on removing the embryo from the incubator about once daily over the course of five to six days to view its development under the microscope. As such, current methods only allow for a few static images which cannot give a reliable indication of whether an embryo has chromosome abnormalities, and also disturb the developing embryo. To select the best embryo for implantation, biopsies of the embryo have to be taken to examine the genes. The new technique potentially offers a non-invasive way to assess the risk of chromosome abnormality using detailed time-lapse images.
The results of this study are promising, but there are some limitations:
- It only assessed the outcomes for only 69 couples who received care at one fertility service. Larger numbers of embryos would ideally need to be assessed to confirm the results. Ideally, prospective studies comparing this new technique with standard techniques would also be carried out.
- The researchers note that their methods and results may not be directly transferable to other laboratories or other types of patient populations.
The technique, while potentially promising, is still in an early stage of development.
Analysis by Bazian. Edited by NHS Choices. Follow Behind the Headlines on Twitter.
Links To The Headlines
IVF could be revolutionised by new technique, says clinic. The Guardian, May 17 2013
'Most exciting breakthrough in IVF treatment in 30 years' could triple number of births. The Independent, May 17 2013
IVF advance triples couples' chances of having a baby. The Daily Telegraph, May 17 2013
IVF test that 'trebles the chance of a baby': Photo method helps doctors implant best embryo. Daily Mail, May 17 2013
IVF 'may be boosted by time-lapse embryo imaging'. BBC News, May 17 2013
New IVF Technique Could Triple Number Of Births. Sky News, May 17 2013
IVF time lapse photographing technique breakthrough could help avoid miscarriages and triple number of births. Daily Mirror, May 17 2013
New IVF technique using time-lapse photos to increase number of healthy births. Metro, May 17 2013
Links To Science
Campbell A, Fishel S, Bowman N, et al. Retrospective analysis of outcomes after IVF using an aneuploidy risk model derived from time-lapse imaging without PGS. Reproductive BioMedicine Online. Published online May 13 2013
VIDEO: Dramatic views from the skies over Ely and the Fens from paramotor enthusiast
AN enthusiast from Ely has put together startling images of what it’s like to be guiding a paramotor over Cambridgeshire.
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