varoblog

(sz) Ian and Rebecca Bloomer, a British couple have become the first parents to have a baby using a pioneering IVF technique which fast-freezes embryos. The world’s “coolest” baby, who has been christened Evie, was born on the 23 of July this year.
Evie was conceived using an unconventional IVF method which is supposed to double the likelihood of childless couples having a baby of their own.
Vitrification is the method used to freeze the embryos. The embryo is pushed into liquid nitrogen which instantly freezes it at – 190 degrees Centigrade, without giving any time for crystal formation. The procedures used in the past took about 2-3 hours to freeze the embryo and this damaged it when it was thawed.
Mr and Mrs Bloomer had been trying desperately to have a baby since the last seven years. Mrs. Bloomer, 28 years of age, had endometriosis, a condition which was making it difficult for her to conceive. Normal IVF’s had failed for her repeatedly.
They attended the IVF clinic at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff where their embryo was frozen using the new technique of vitrification.
Evie was born after her embryo was plunged into liquid nitrogen, the coldest form of freezing known to man, before being thawed and then implanted into her mum. more…

From: »The Med Guru«

(wz) A hospital which has adopted a pioneering technique to store embryos produced by IVF treatment has seen pregnancy rates double.
Seventeen of the 39 women offered the embryo vitrification treatment at the University Hospital of Wales’ IVF clinic in the last year have so far fallen pregnant, with four of them expecting twins.
The Cardiff hospital is believed to be the first in the UK to offer embryo vitrification and it is certainly the first to use new cryoleaf technology to carry out the process, hospital bosses say.
Lyndon Miles, head of embryology and andrology for IVF Wales, explained that vitrification involves rapidly cooling and storing cells at very low temperatures for future use.
“An IVF cycle produces a number of embryos,” he said. “Those that aren’t immediately transferred back to the patient and that are of good enough quality are cooled slowly to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (-196C) and stored until needed. more…

From: »Hospital Health Care«

(sz) Fertility clinics should send thousands of couples home without treatment, according to doctors whose research found that common frontline treatments often fail to improve a woman’s chances of having a baby.
The study, reported in the British Medical Journal, showed that many women who were given the fertility pill clomifene, or who had intrauterine insemination (IUI), which involves injecting sperm directly into the womb, had no more babies than those who were sent home with nothing but advice on when best to have sex.
Siladitya Bhattacharya, a professor of gynaecology and obstetrics who led the study at Aberdeen University, said the treatments amounted to an enormous and unjustified cost to the NHS. He said the money spent could be redirected to improve the availability of IVF, which is considered to be more effective.
Nearly a third of couples who have trouble conceiving do not have any obvious medical problems, and in almost every case they are offered clomifene or IUI. Clomifene is effective in women who have stopped ovulating, but is given to others in the belief that it may boost their chances of conceiving. IUI is designed to overcome any problems sperm may have in passing through the cervix.
“A number of treatments have crept into fertility clinics over the years and are now part of our usual repertoire, but as with many things in infertility, most of these have not been properly evaluated,” said Bhattacharya.
“Almost all couples with unexplained infertility will have one or both of these treatments, but neither of them is significantly more effective than telling the couple to just go home and get on with it, which is a lot cheaper and more fun,” he added.
Last year doctors wrote more than 20,000 prescriptions for clomifene at a cost of more than £170,000. Fertility clinics charge between £500 and £1,000 for a single course of IUI. more…

From: »The Guardian«

(sz) Fertility treatments offered to couples trying for a baby are no more effective than attempts to conceive naturally, a study suggests today.
Couples who attempt artificial insemination or use a drug designed to aid conception do not have significantly higher chances of a pregnancy than those not receiving treatment, the researchers found.
One in seven couples in Britain experiences problems conceiving, with about a quarter of these having unexplained infertility.
Treatments are offered in line with fertility guidelines issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). They include artificial insemination, and the drug clomiphene citrate, which is believed to correct subtle ovulatory dysfunction. Such treatments are relatively inexpensive and do not involve stimulation of a woman’s ovaries or IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal, however, have thrown into question the provision of such treatments on the NHS. Intrauterine insemination (IUI) and clomiphene citrate (Clomifert or Clomid) are recommended for couples who have had difficulty conceiving, but where investigations have failed to find out why. Couples would typically be offered these methods before considering IVF, which involves collecting a woman’s eggs, fertilising them outside the body and returning them to her womb. more…

From: »The Times«

(wz) Complications associated with IVF are due to underlying fertility problems in the parents and not the techniques used during treatment, research suggests.
A study of more than 1.2 million births in Norway found an increased risk of low birthweight, premature birth or still birth after fertility treatment.
But further analysis showed this was unlikely to be related to the treatment itself, The Lancet study reported.
Around 1.5% of births in the UK are a result of fertility treatment.
Previous research has also shown that single births after fertility treatment are associated with a higher risk of complications but the reasons have been unclear.
In the latest study, babies born after fertility treatment were on average 25g smaller at birth, were born two days earlier and had a 31% increased risk of stillbirth.
But when the researchers looked in more detail at a subgroup of 2,500 women who had had babies naturally and through fertility treatment they found no significant difference in outcomes between the two kinds of births.
This suggests that the increased chance of complications may be due to the factors causing the fertility problems in the first place rather than the technology used to increase chances of conception, the researchers concluded. more…

From: »The BBC«

(sz) A social networking site aimed at new dads and a documentary about Western couples seeking IVF in India are among the projects to secure investment from a £600,000 fund.
After record numbers of applications, regional screen agency Screen WM has announced the 21 successful screen media companies which will receive investment from the Advantage Development Fund.
The fund, supported by Advantage West Midlands and the European Regional Development Fund, was re-launched in February to enable new and existing screen-based media companies to undertake research and development work prior to bringing new projects to the market.
This allows companies to develop projects to a higher standard before launching, to minimise the risk of failure.
Among the projects that will benefit from the fund are four new quiz shows, a PC game development for businesses to develop and train their sales staff and several feature films.
Screen WM chief executive Suzie Norton said: “The phenomenal interest in and demand for the Advantage Development Fund underlines the expansion of the screen media sector in the region in the last few years.
“Enabling companies to develop new ideas is the lifeblood of the industry and is vital to the survival and success of our screen media companies.”
The re-launched Advantage Development Fund has been expanded beyond film and broadcast to include the games, interactive and new media sectors. This was in response to the growth of the sectors within the screen media industry and the recent expansion of Screen WM to include digital media. more…

From: »The Birmingham Post«

(sz) The Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine (CCRM) announced today an increase in in vitro fertilization (IVF) success rates to 80 percent from its Institutional Review Board-approved clinical preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) study involving comprehensive screening of all 23 pairs of chromosomes on day five embryos (blastocysts).
In May 2007, CCRM commenced this innovative, world first clinical study, which screens for all 23 pairs of chromosomes on a few cells removed from the blastocyst using a technique called comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). The small number of cells removed are destined to become future placental cells. The goal of comprehensive chromosomal screening is to reduce the likelihood of implantation failure, miscarriage, and/or aneuploid offspring (i.e., Down syndrome), by only transferring embryos that have the correct number of chromosomes. Previous PGS techniques involved screening only five to nine pairs of chromosomes.
“There are many variables that contribute to a successful pregnancy,” said William Schoolcraft, M.D., founder and medical director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. “One of them is having an embryo with the correct number of chromosomes. Since a high proportion of failed pregnancies are due to abnormalities in chromosome numbers, CGH helps eliminate one variable from the equation.”
more…

From: »The Wall Street Journal«

(wz) Despite the prevalence of acupuncture as a complement to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment, a new study to be published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology has found that there is little evidence of any benefits.
The study, from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, was a review and meta-analysis of 13 randomised trials involving the use of acupuncture during IVF treatment and outcome assessment. In total, 2500 women were included.
Five of the 13 trials included a total of 877 women and evaluated IVF outcome when acupuncture was performed at the time of egg retrieval from the woman. All five studies were based in Europe and the mean age of the participants was 30.5 to 34.4 years. Pooling of the results showed no significant difference in the clinical pregnancy rate between the acupuncture and control groups (relative risks (RR) = 1.06, 95% CI 0.82-1.37, P = 0.65).
A further eight trials included a total of 1623 women and assessed IVF outcome when acupuncture was performed at the time of embryo transfer. Four of these studies were conducted in Europe, three in the USA and one in Australia. Again when pooling the results of all the studies, no significant difference between the acupuncture and control groups was detected (RR = 1.23, 95% CI 0.96-1.58, P = 0.28). more…

From: »Medical News Today«

(cz) Babies conceived through IVF are much more likely to die at birth than those conceived naturally, the results of a new study show.
IVF children are also at an increased risk of being born prematurely and of weighing less at birth, scientists found.
Researchers looked at more than 2,500 women who had conceived both naturally and through IVF and compared the results to more than one million natural conceptions.
They found that babies who had been conceived through IVF were 31 per cent more likely to die in the period before and after their birth.
IVF conceived children also tended to weigh an average of 0.9 ounces (25g) less at birth, the findings, published online in the Lancet medical journal show.
The babies also tended to be born earlier, by an average of two days, and were 26 per cent more likely to be small for their age.
Dr Liv Bente Romundstad, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who led the study, believes that the high death rate among IVF babies could be linked to the underlying reasons why their mother sought infertility treatment in the first place.
Her results also show that among women who conceived with fertility treatment but also had another child naturally, the spontaneously conceived baby was three times more likely to die than its IVF sibling. more…

From: »The Daily Telegraph«

(wz) New research finds condition damages the sperm’s DNA.
Experts have suspected as much for years and now it has been confirmed: diabetes is a threat to male fertility, according to new research by Queen’s University Belfast.
The study found the impact was strongest in people with type 1 diabetes, which is usually present from childhood, but was also apparent in men who developed the condition later.
Fertility experts at the university have been studying sperm samples from 60 diabetic men for several years, comparing them with thousands of other men without the condition. The latest study, involving examination of the semen of eight men with diabetes, found that it had disrupted the DNA in their sperm.
The researchers concluded that high blood sugar levels meant men with the condition “have a significant decrease in their ability to repair sperm DNA, and once this is damaged it cannot be restored”.
Neil McClure, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the university, said the possibility of a link between the condition and reduced fertility had been mooted before but adequate research had never been carried out.
“Male fertility has always been looked at in diabetics in a haphazard way,” he said. “Under a light microscope there’s no difference, but in DNA analysis, you see a lot more damage. Diabetes affects virtually every part of the body. It sticks little sugar molecules onto everything, so when we looked at the sperm we found a lot of these molecules. The whole way the DNA functions in the diabetic man is upset.” more…

From: »The Times«