Adult stem cells may lead to new infertility treatment

A special class of adult stem cells, known as human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, has for the first time been reprogrammed into cells that develop into human eggs and sperm. The research, carried out by members of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)’s Broad Stem Cell Research Center, was published in the January [...]

Second hand smoke affects fertility

If you need another reason to quit smoking, consider that it may diminish your chances of being a parent or grandparent. Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that women exposed to second hand smoke, either as adults or children, were significantly more likely to face fertility problems and suffer miscarriages.
 An epidemiologic [...]

Couple Celebrate Their Miracle Baby

A mother has become the first in Britain to have a successful pregnancy after receiving a double organ transplant.
Emma Smith, 37, from Little Wymondley gave birth to healthy 6lb baby Oliver at the end of last month despite having a donor pancreas and kidney. 
It is extremely rare because anti-rejection drugs, which must be taken for [...]

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 [...]

Diabetes and male infertility

Researchers have found that diabetes may affect sperm quality, after a study comparing the DNA in sperm from diabetic and non-diabetic men found more DNA damage in the sperm cells of the diabetic men.
 
The study, conducted by the research group at Queen’s University Belfast, with findings published in the journal Human Reproduction, found that [...]

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 [...]

Father’s age and Infertility

Among couples with fertility problems, those in which the man is over age 35 have lower pregnancy rates and increased chances of miscarriage, a new study shows.
To come to this conclusion, French researchers looked at more than 12,000 couples who went to a fertility clinic in France. In most of the cases, the couples were [...]

Perfumed ‘risk’ to future fertility

A principal investigator for the Human Reproductive Sciences Unit of theUK’s Medical Research Council (MRC) has revealed that using certain cosmetics during the early stages of pregnancy could affect fertility in males in later life. Professor Richard Sharpe undertook research on rats, which showed that after exposure to certain chemicals commonly found in cosmetics such [...]