Bracewell–Milnes T et al. – The study examined the recent findings for the potential application of metabolomics of follicular fluid (FF), embryo culture medium (ECM) and endometrial fluid to female reproduction. Metabolics and the female reproductive tract were investigated and risk of bias assessment and ROBIN–I were used for the quality analysis. Compositional analysis of various biofluids in the female reproductive tract, including FF, ECM, blastocoele fluid and endometrial fluid was performed, finally providing guidance for future metabolomic studies on biofluids of the female reproductive tract.

Methods

• For this research, they conducted a systematic review.
• English peer–reviewed journals on PubMed, Science Direct, SciFinder, were systematically searched for studies exploring metabolomics and the female reproductive tract with no time restriction set for publications.
• Studies were evaluated for quality utilizing the risk of bias evaluation and ROBIN–I.

Results

• They found there were 21 studies that met the inclusion criteria and were included in the systematic review.
• Metabolomic studies have been employed for the compositional examination of different biofluids in the female reproductive tract, including FF, ECM, blastocoele fluid and endometrial fluid.
• There is some weak evidence that metabolomics technologies studying ECM might be able to predict the viability of individual embryos and implantation rate better than standard embryo morphology.
• However these data were not supported by randomized the controlled trials (RCTs) which demonstrated no proof that utilizing metabolomics is able to improve the most important reproductive outcomes, such as clinical pregnancy and live–birth rates.
• This systematic review provides guidance for future metabolomic studies on biofluids of the female reproductive tract, with a summary of the current findings, promise and pitfalls in metabolomic techniques.
• The approaches discussed can be adapted by other metabolomic studies.