In-vitro fertilisation: The assisted techonolgy behind birth of 1 million babies in US

In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other assisted reproductive technologies have been used for the birth of at least one million babies in the US, according to a report.

The US Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) released the latest report this week. SART started to assemble data on assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in 1985, Xinhua news agency reported.

In 2015, 371 clinics of SART, which represent more than 90 per cent of the infertility clinics of US, informed that they had performed that they had performed 213,004 treatment cycles that resulted in the birth of 67,818 babies.

In 2015, positive trends in treatments and outcomes continued. 34.5 per cent transferred a single embryo, to 27.2 per cent in 2014, the report said.

"Fewer embryos transferred leads to lower incidence of multiple birth: 80.5 per cent of babies born from 2015 cycles were singletons, 19.1 per cent twins and fewer than one-half of one per cent were triplets (or higher order)," the report said.

There have been improvements in egg cryo-preservation techniques, and with this the use of froxon donor eggs has also increased.

Frozen donor eggs were in use by at least 2,886 recipient cycle in 2014 and the number rose to 3,215 in 2015.

IVF was introduced in the year 1981 and if we go according to SART,  about one in every 100 babies born in the country was conceived using IVF and related treatments.

The world's first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in Britain in 1978.