DOI: 10.36347/sasjm.2015.v01i04.005

Pages: Page: 144-148

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between the cortisol hormone levels of depressed infertile women with their IVF results throughout the treatment process to identify the consequences of IVF. In this prospective study, 74 women who were being treated by IVF at the Mother and Child Infertility Center of Shiraz and were affected by mild to moderate depression based on Beck inventory were randomly selected as the subjects. The sampling and follow-up were performed from April 2014 to March 2015. Cortisol levels were measured in the patients' serum at three stages: 1) before the treatment (T1), 2) on the day of egg retrieval (T2), and 3) and on the day of transferring the embryo to the uterus (T3). Sampling was conducted from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. To analyze the data, the researchers used SPSS. In findings 32.43% of the subjects got pregnant after the treatment, and 54.16% miscarried before the eighth week of their pregnancy. The researchers did not find a significant relationship between the subjects' depression scores and pregnancy outcome. In patients with a low cortisol level on the day of egg retrieval, chances of pregnancy were significantly higher (p=0.01). The relationship between the two variables of imperfect eggs and cortisol level was significant (p=0.011); higher levels of cortisol at the beginning of treatment correlated with a greater number of imperfect eggs in patients.