The effect of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) supplementation on women with diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) in IVF cycle: Evidence from a meta-analysis

To evaluate the effect of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) therapy on the ovarian response and pregnancy outcome in patients with diminished ovarian reserve (DOR). Eligible studies, published before August 31, 2015, were identified from PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane library. Outcome measures were the number of retrieved oocytes, cancellation rate of IVF cycles, clinical pregnancy rate and miscarriage rate. We adopted Revman 5.0 software to pool the data from the eligible studies. A total of 9 studies, four were RCTs, four retrospective studies, one prospective studies, including 540 cases and 668 controls, were available for analysis. The pooled analysis showed that the clinical pregnancy rates were increased significantly in DOR patients who were pre-treated with DHEA (OR = 1.47, 95% CI: 1.09-1.99), whereas no differences were found in the number of oocytes retrieved, the cancellation rate of IVF cycles and the miscarriage rate between the cases and controls (WMD= −0.69, 95% CI: −2.18-0.81; OR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.51-1.08; OR = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.10-1.24). However, it is worth noting that when data were restricted to RCTs, there was a non-significant difference in the clinical pregnancy rate (OR = 1.08, 95% CI: 0.67-1.73). We concluded that DHEA supplementation in DOR patients might improve the pregnancy outcomes. To further confirm this effect, more randomized controlled trials with large sample sizes are needed.