Pre-emption dimensional study aiming to obtain significant statistical results for the variation of serum cortisol during ovarian stimulation.

ABSTRACT

UNLABELLED Ovarian stimulation has an important place in the contemporary impressive development of infertility treatment. There are few and not concordant data concerning its influence on cortisol serum levels. AIM: The present study aimed at finding the necessary number of determinations in order to statistically assess the variation of cortisol during and caused by the ovarian stimulation. METHODS: In 25 consecutive infertile women (23-45 years old, average 32.4 years) enrolled in an ovarian stimulation program (gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist--busereline--from the first day of the cycle, human menopausal gonadotropin beginning with the 14th day of the cycle, ovulation triggering by human chorionic gonadotropin), serum cortisol was measured one month before the study, the 1st, 14th, 16th, 19th, 22nd, 24th day, the day before the triggering of the ovulation, one, two, 19 days and one month after triggering. General methods of data analysis map into descriptive and inferential statistics were used, with BMDP, SAS 6.0 and Epilnfo 5 software. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The calculated number of determinations, in order to obtain a significant statistical variation of cortisol for the studied set of samples and stimulation protocol is between 28-35--but smaller (15 and 19) around ovulation triggering and 39 patients for a > or = 5% variation compared to control values. The suppositions considered in the present paper seem to offer a correct estimation for obtaining the size of the sample sets to be analyzed in a future study.