Background/Purpose: Women with chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases increasingly solicit assisted reproductive techniques (ART) due to infertility, but there is little information about success rates of these techniques in such patients.

Objective: To analyze pregnancy rates after artificial insemination (AI) and in vitro fertilization-intracytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF-ICSI) in patients with inflammatory rheumatic disease.

Methods: Prospective study of 41 women with inflammatory rheumatic disease: 15 rheumatoid arthritis, 7 spondyloarthritis, 10 systemic lupus erythematosus, 4 Sjögren´s disease, 2 undifferentiated connective tissue disease, 1, dermatomyositis, 2 Behcet disease, monitored by our department. Mean age 33 years (range 24-41) and 5 ± 7 years from diagnosis of disease, currently inactive or with low clinical activity. Due to infertility, these patients underwent ART: 8 with AI and 33 with IVF-ICSI.

We analyzed pregnancy rate and live-birth rate per cycle in all women and by age.

Results: Pregnancy rate per cycle of AI was 14.9% with a cumulative rate of 33% after four cycles. In patients over 35 years the pregnancy rate per cycle was reduced to 7%.
The pregnancy rate per attempt using IVF-ICSI was 23.9% with a cumulative rate of 37% after three attempts. In women over 35 years the success rate was 23.2%.

The live-birth rate per-cycle was 74.9%; 73.3% in woman over 35.

Conclusion: The pregnancy rates of both AI and IVF-ICSI were a little lower in this series of patients with inflammatory rheumatic disease than those reported for the general population. However, the live birth rate per cycle was similar to the general population.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/assisted-reproductive-technology-in-patients-with-inflammatory-and-autoimmune-rheumatic-disease/