Bee venom treatment of refractory pregnancy. A modern trend

Objective: To determine the role of bee venom injection in women who previously failed to achieve a successful pregnancy following at least 3 IVF-ET cycles and if it would improve the chances of successful conception following another IVF-ET cycle. Design: Pregnancy after failed repeated 3 successive in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer-IVF-ET trials is a striking subject and to the best of our knowledge, no report in the literature has dealt with this topic. It has been suggested that an increase in the Natural Killer cell percentage in the blood or increase in NK cell activity in the endometrium can cause embryo/fetal destruction. Trying to negate these adverse effects was warranted. We have found that bee venom due to its peculiar chemical composition can offer a solution for this problem. Our own speculation is that immune rejection is more related, not to a cellular immune system that is always over-stimulated, but rather to a failure to secrete sufficient immuno-modulatory protein after trophoblast invasion which inhibits what should be a normal immune response to allograft. Materials and Methods: Seven cases were enrolled in this study. Criteria for selection were previous failure to have a successful pregnancy after, at least, 3 or more attempts of IVF-ET. Patients were referred from different centers. Two cases had failed 5 attempts, 4 had failed 4 attempts and one case failed after 3 attempts. Mean age was 38.2+2.1. Bee venom therapy was started for 2 weeks every other day (0.1 ml SC Farid ampoule-first author of this study). Following this, another IVF-ET attempt was done. Results: Four cases got pregnant (57.1%): 2 from failed previous 4 attempts, one case from failed previous 5 attempts and one from failed previous 3 attempts. Live births rate was 3 cases (75%). One case aborted at 6 weeks of pregnancy. Conclusion: These data revealed that bee venom therapy can stimulate post-implantation immuno-stimulatory protein, opening a new horizon in the field for improvement of results of IVF-ET. However, this should be confirmed by a randomized prospective trial.