IVF NewsAnnouncement: World Embryologist Day
Liesl Nel-Themaat, Ph.D. 14 February 2013
I am happy to announce the results of the survey for embryologist day. [ Full Article ] News: Healthy diet may improve sperm quality
Sarah Guy 16 June 2009
A diet rich in steak and other red meat might hinder a man's chances of conceiving a child, say Spanish researchers. According to their study published in the journal 'Fertility and Sterility', a healthy antioxidant-rich diet might be the key to sperm quality and motility. Men who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, in particular peppers, spinach and citrus fruits, have higher quality and faster swimming sperm. [ Full Article ] News: Italy passes strictest ART laws
Dr. Kirsty Horsey 13 December 2003
The Italian Senate has passed a bill governing assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), said to be the most restrictive in Europe. Parliamentarians voted 169-90 in favour of the bill, the first that the country has passed in this area. Italian lawmakers, while debating the new law, were concerned that Italy was seen as the 'Wild West of assisted reproduction' because, in the past, people have been able to travel to the country for many controversial treatments not available in their own countries.
Because of this, the new laws proposed are very restrictive, limiting the use of ARTs to 'stable heterosexual couples'. Research using human embryos is prohibited, as well as embryo freezing, gamete donation, surrogacy and the provision of any ARTs for single women or same-sex couples. The bill also says that no more than three eggs can be fertilised at any one time, and that any eggs fertilised must all be transferred to the uterus simultaneously. PGD and prenatal screening for genetic disorders would also been banned. Under the bill, ARTs can only be provided if the couple is clinically infertile. Doctors will be able to 'conscientiously object' to providing ART services. The bill also proposes that existing IVF embryos in frozen storage in Italy will be put up 'for adoption' if unclaimed, and storage facilities will then be closed. Violations of the new legislation will be severely punished, carrying jail sentences of between 10 and 20 years for scientists involved in cloning or the manipulation of human embryos. Cloning will also be subject to a one million Euro fine. Doctors who use donated gametes in treatment will be fined up to 600,000 Euros and those providing ARTs for single women or same-sex couples could be fined up to 300,000 Euros. The bill will now have to get final approval from the lower house of parliament before it becomes law, although it is thought that the text will essentially remain the same. Critics of the bill, including many liberal and female members of the Italian parliament, have said that it is too restrictive, especially in comparison with other European countries, and it places women's health at risk. 'It is truly an awful law', said Senator Gavino Angius, from the Democratic left. Italian scientists have called it 'unacceptable and immoral'. 'Under this insane new law, we will be obliged to implant a defective embryo in the womb', said Nino Guglielmino, a doctor specialising in PGD. Arne Sunde, head of the European Society of Human Reproduction (ESHRE), said the new law would be 'disastrous'. 'Clinical practice in Italy will become less efficient and will have an increased frequency of negative side effects, such as multiple pregnancies', he added. [ Full Article ] News: Surrogacy on offer between Japan and South Korea
Dr. Kirsty Horsey 05 September 2005
A sperm bank based in Tokyo is causing controversy by offering to match surrogate mothers and assisted conception services in South Korea to Japanese couples. The service has been offered from the beginning of the year and the company - called Excellence - reports that it already has two customers on its books seeking South Korean surrogates: one is a single woman in her thirties and the other is a lesbian couple. [ Full Article ] News: ICSI success rates have declined in Italy since new law
Dr. Kirsty Horsey 27 June 2005
BioNews reporting from ESHRE conference, Copenhagen: A presentation given at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) shows what clinical effects restrictive Italian fertility laws, which came into force on 10 March 2004, have had on success rates - both in the laboratory and the clinic - of treatment by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). [ Full Article ] News: 'Kiss' hormone to give new hope to infertile women
Sarah Guy 22 March 2009
A group of scientists at Imperial College London have found that administration of the recently discovered protein 'kisspeptin' could 'restore fertility' for some women and form the basis for a new fertility treatment. [ Full Article ] News: Cut-price IVF for stem cell research egg donors
Mackenna Roberts 18 September 2007
Women who donate some of their eggs to stem cell research will receive half-price discounted IVF treatment - a �1,500 stipend reducing the costs of one cycle of IVF treatment from �3,000 - at the Newcastle Fertility Centre. The Medical Research Council has recently awarded �150,000 funding to subsidise the IVF treatment and �760,000 towards research. Donor recruitment for the scheme began last Thursday and targets women in the North-East of England aged 21 to 35. The globally unprecedented 'egg-sharing' scheme is being run by the North-East England Stem Cell Institute (Nesci) in Newcastle, and was approved by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in July 2006. It received public support following a consultation in January 2007.
It is intended to make the benefits of IVF more accessible to infertile women whilst addressing the shortage of high quality eggs for human stem cell research, thereby assisting scientists to progress in the global race to seek stem cell therapies for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Professor Alison Murdoch, head of the clinic, welcomes the funding to help 'ease the financial burden for those who require IVF' and often require multiple cycles to achieve pregnancy. She emphasises these women are not at any additional medical risk and that this option is being provided only to women who receive counselling and they must undergo the usual high-degree of scrutiny from local and national medical ethics committees.
In general, the IVF procedure results in a surplus of leftover eggs. These eggs would usually be discarded and now can be donated. A previous pilot egg-sharing scheme asked for two eggs if 12 are harvested for IVF, resulting in a total of only 66 eggs over seven months. This programme would significantly increase that number to meet the high demand for fresh eggs required by researchers 'to progress towards improving the efficiency of therapeutic cloning in humans' according to Dr Mary Herbert who will lead the research, and will further our understanding of 'underlying causes of infertility and birth defects'.
The eggs will be used in somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) experiments, so-called therapeutic cloning research, which aims to create human embryonic stem cell lines that are genetically matched to patients. However, some scientists argue that this technique is too imperfect a science at this point - the success rate is significantly less than 0.5 per cent and so involves using a high, inefficient number of eggs.
Josephine Quintavalle, from the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, declared it 'lunacy' and exploitation of vulnerable, infertile women. The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics (SCHB) considers the move to be 'scandalous'. Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the SCHB, added, 'No rich person would even consider this kind of arrangement'.
[ Full Article ] News: SPERM FROM FEMALE STEM CELLS?
Charlotte Maden 10 February 2008
British scientists have created early-stage, human sperm from female stem cells, according to a news report in New Scientist magazine. It is claimed that the research will pave the way for same sex couples to have children that are genetically their own. However, other scientists are sceptical that this procedure would ever be possible. Professor Karim Nayernia at the University of Newcastle initially fertilised mice with sperm derived from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in 2006, which gave rise to seven pups, six of which survived. In more recent work, he took human male stem cells from bone marrow and formed 'spermatogonia', primitive sperm cells that can form mature sperm cells by going through a process called meiosis. Nayernia has now apparently done the same using human female stem cells, work that has yet to be published. The next stage in the process would be to make these primitive sperm cells undergo meiosis, which Nayernia claims he has started to do. The result could be that female eggs are fertilised by 'female' sperm, thereby eradicating the need for male gametes. However, Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell expert at the National Institute of Medical Research in London, does not think the approach it will work. He told the Telegraph newspaper that the 'presence of two X chromosomes is incompatible with this. Moreover they need genes from the Y chromosome [from the male sperm] to go through meiosis. So they are at least double damned'. Safety issues have also been raised, since the mice pups in Nayernia's initial study had health problems. A Brazilian team of scientists lead by Dr Irina Kerkis at the Butantan Institute in Sao Paolo also claim to have made sperm and eggs from male mouse ESCs, and are currently starting to take the work into human cells. The research brings hope to people dealing with infertility, a problem that affects one in six couples, although scientists say the process is still in its infancy and treatments are a long way off. There is also potential to use 'induced pluripotent stem cells', stem cells derived from human skin cells, as a starting point for the process. This could enable gay men to donate skin cells that would be used to create stem cells from which eggs could be formed. The eggs could then be fertilised using sperm from his partner, and placed in a surrogate mother. Greg Aharonian, a patent analyst in the US, is trying to patent the technology behind 'female' sperm and 'male' eggs. A self-proclaimed 'troublemaker', he wants to undermine the argument that marriage should remain heterosexual because its main purpose is procreation. The controversial developments have provoked mixed responses in the UK and US. Mike Judge from the Christian Institute faith group says that 'children need male and a female role models'. Many religious groups still oppose gay marriage. Josephine Quintavalle, from the pro-life lobby group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, says: 'we are looking at absurd solutions to very obscure situations and not addressing the main issue. Nobody is interested in looking at what is causing infertility - social reasons such as obesity, smoking and age'. [ Full Article ] News: ICSI affects growth of female embryos
Dr. Kirsty Horsey 29 June 2004
BioNews reporting from ESHRE conference, Berlin: A form of IVF in which a single sperm is injected directly into the egg appears to slow down the growth rate of the resulting female (but not male) early embryos, according to a new Dutch study. The scientists, based at the Academic Hospital Maastricht, say their findings suggest that intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) interferes with key genes involved in embryo development.
The team, lead by John Dumoulin, looked at the sex and number of cells in 330 blastocysts from conventional IVF cycles and 322 blastocysts from ICSI cycles, collected over a five year period. They found that both the male and female embryos created using IVF had similar numbers of cells (around 50). However, the female embryos created using ICSI had around 20 per cent fewer cells than the male ICSI embryos. 'Our work has clearly shown that ICSI is a significant factor in influencing growth rate, although we do not yet understand why', said Dumoulin. The researchers also found that X-chromosome inactivation ? the process by which one of the two X-chromosomes is randomly 'switched off' in every cell of a female embryo - was disrupted in the ICSI embryos. X-inactivation works in a similar way to genomic imprinting, the switching off of certain genes during gamete development, according to whether they are maternal or paternal in origin. Previous studies have linked IVF and ICSI to a slightly increased risk of rare genetic disorders caused by a failure of genetic imprinting, for example Angelman syndrome and Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome. However, in both the imprinting disorder research and the latest study, it is not yet clear whether it is the IVF procedure itself causing problems, or some feature common to couples affected by subfertility. Dumoulin says the next step is to measure whether the embryo growth differences are restricted to the pre-implantation period, or whether they are present and measurable at a later stage of development. 'If these differences were to be perpetuated at a later stage it would clearly be significant for clinical practice', he said. [ Full Article ] Announcement: ACADEMY OF CLINICAL EMBRYOLOGIST, India
Parag Nandi 11 January 2011
Visit ACE Website The Association of Clinical Embryologists (ACE) is the professional body of and for embryologists. ACE is conceived with the intention to promote high standards of practice in clinical embryology and to support the professional interests of embryologists working in India. ACE aim is to promote interest and understanding in the reproductive biology. This is possible by continuous research in the ART field and application of the findings to human reproduction. To achieve this goal it is essential to establish better co-ordination between scientist and clinicians. ACE team/family is dedicated to promote clinical embryology by Continuous education in reproductive biology viz
The office bearers and committee members wellcomes you to join ACE – India. [ Full Article ] |