Received December 04, 2017
Accepted July 01, 2018

The aim of this review is to determine if the use of DHEA increases the likelihood of success in patients with POR. We searched MEDLINE and EMBASE using the terms "DHEA and diminished ovarian reserve", "DHEA and poor response", "DHEA and premature ovarian aging". A xed e ects model was used and Peto's method to get the odds ratio (OR) with 95% con dence intervals (CI 95%). For quantitative variables, Cohen's method was used to pres- ent the standardized mean di erences (SMD) with their corresponding con dence intervals. Only ve studied ful- lled the selection criteria. DHEA was administered in 25 mg doses, three times a day. In all studies, the authors corrected for the presence of confounding variables such as partner's age, infertility diagnosis and number of trans- ferred embryos. The meta-analysis of the ve selected studies assessed a total of 910 patients, who underwent IVF/ICSI, of which 413 had received DHEA. DHEA use was associated with a signi cant increase in pregnancy likeli- hood (OR 1.8, CI 95% 1.29 to 2.51, p=0.001). When ana- lyzing the association between DHEA use and the likelihood of abortion, we found low heterogeneity between studies (I2=0.0%) and the use of DHEA to be associated to a sig- ni cant reduction in the likelihood of abortion (OR 0.25, CI 0.07 to 0.95; p=0.045). Analysis of the association of DHEA with average oocyte retrieval showed high variabil- ity between studies (I2=98.6%), as well as no association between DHEA use and the number of oocytes retrieved (SMD -0.01, CI 95% -0.16 to 0.13; p>0.05).