A Cancer Patient Fathers a Child After 22 Years

A man who had his sperm frozen whilst undergoing treatment for leukaemia as a teenager, has, at 38, become the father of a healthy baby girl. Christopher Biblis from Charlotte, North Carolina, was 16 when he underwent radiotherapy treatment which would have left him sterile had his doctors not recommended he have his sperm frozen [...]

First the Biopsy, then The Baby

A common medical procedure may be the key to helping couples who’ve had no luck with artificial insemination and IVF. Could a common uterine biopsy make pregnancy “stick” for women having trouble conceiving? A small but growing number of couples are embracing an unusual use of biopsies during infertility treatments in the belief that they [...]

The Perils Of Being Older Dads

Women with older partners may be at higher risk of suffering miscarriages irrespective of their own age, according to a study that has linked the increased chance of a failed pregnancy with men over the age of 40. Until now it was widely assumed that miscarriage rates largely increased with female age only, but [...]

Easing fertility through lifestyle changes

Couples who have been trying to conceive can easily grow impatient when their plans don’t go exactly, or as easily, as planned. But before concluding that they may have certain fertility problems or that they need fertility drugs or treatments, it is good to first take a closer look into the way they are leading [...]

Cell phone risk to sperm supported

An in vitro comparison study has strengthened concerns that electromagnetic radiation from cell phones impairs male fertility.
 Ashok Agarwal (Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA) and colleagues set out to validate the implications of recent epidemiologic studies, which reported reductions in sperm motility, morphology, and viability associated with cell phone exposure.
 They studied neat semen samples from 23 normal [...]

Freezing improves DNA integrity

Gamete cryopreservation could help improve the fertility of men whose spermatozoa show a high level of prefreeze DNA fragmentation, study findings indicate.
 Laura Thomson (Fertility First, Hurstville, Australia) and co-authors note potential cryoinjury of sperm from subfertile men is an issue of primary concern “considering that subfertile men form a very large proportion of the men [...]

Widow claims human right to use dead husband’s sperm

 
The UK’s High Court has ruled that it may have been unlawful for a widow to have removed her dead husband’s sperm. Despite UK law requiring valid written consent for the storage and use of sperm, the 42-year-old widow obtained emergency Court permission to have sperm collected from her 31-year-old husband’s body hours after he [...]

Depression and Infertility

Research studies have documented the correlation between stress and infertility  since the 1980s. The usefulness of such information has lagged because the focus has been on vague definitions of anxiety, rather than symptoms of depression. Recently, however, a refined look at depressive symptoms and their impact on biology has been enlightening, offering new hope and a [...]

Prognosis ‘encouraging’ after total fertilization failure in IVF and ICSI

More than 40 percent of patients who experience total fertilization failure after an IVF cycle have a baby at a later attempt, researchers report.
Total fertilization failure after IVF or ICSI can be very frustrating for patients and clinicians alike.
Little information has been available about patients’ chances of success in the future or how changes in [...]

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is an in vitro fertilization procedure in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg; this procedure is most commonly used to overcome male infertility problems. With conventional IVF, one can expect approximately 75% of the oocytes (eggs) to fertilize if they are healthy and the sperm parameters are [...]