IVF News

I am happy to announce the results of the survey for embryologist day.

First I want to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. James Stanger who compiled and managed the survey.
A comprehensive summary of the voting results as well as the numerous comments and suggestions can be viewed at the following link:

http://www.fertaid.com/FertAid/FertAid_Surveys_Review.asp?SL=10

Here are the results and the total percentage votes for each:

Name: World Embryologist Day (the plural s was dropped to make it easier to pronounce) (43.75%)

Date: July 25, Louise Brown's birthday (43.71%)

Celebrated by: All who work in IVF (48.76%)

How to celebrate: Clinic celebrations (lunch, drinks, gifts) where the clinics recognize the value of the scientific staff.

So, I will be looking forward to celebrating this day with all or you in the future.
We are communicating with ASRM and ESHRE about having some special events on the day and we will keep you posted.

Thanks again for your participation!

Liesl Nel-Themaat, Ph.D.
Embryologist

Colorado Reproductive Endocrinology
4600 East Hale parkway, Suite 350
Denver, CO 80220

[email protected]

[ Full Article ]

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.

'A healthy diet is not only a good way of avoiding illness, but improves the quality of semen' said Professor Jaime Mendiola, the leading researcher. 'We saw that, among couples with fertility problems coming to the [fertility] clinics, men with good semen quality ate more vegetables and fruit, which means more vitamins, folic acid and fibre, and fewer proteins and fats.'

The study, undertaken at the University of Murcia in Spain, was prompted by the gradual decline in sperm counts across Europe in the last few decades. Male patients at two Spanish fertility clinics took part, and scientists concentrated on the possibility that exposure to contaminants in the workplace and diet might be reducing chances of successful conception. They hypothesised that antioxidants could potentially improve sperm concentration and motility by reducing or slowing the oxidation of other molecules which harms sperm.

Sixty-one men with fertility problems were enrolled into the study, 30 of whom had problems specifically with sperm count. Interviews with the participants showed that those with good sperm quality ate significantly more fruit and vegetables than those whose diets were rich in meat and full-fat dairy products.

'People who eat more fruits and vegetables are ingesting more antioxidants, and this is the important point' said Professor Mendiola. In his next study, he will investigate whether there is a difference in sperm count between men who get their antioxidants via food or from vitamin supplements.

[ Full Article ]

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 ]

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.



In 2003, the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology forbade its members from arranging surrogacy. In response, Japan's Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry compiled a report on the ban and proposed a national law to prohibit surrogacy and surrogacy brokering services, although it supported the use of donor eggs or sperm in IVF. Surrogacy is unregulated in South Korea but ethical guidelines issued by the Korea Medical Association discourage its use if the surrogate mother is attempting to give birth in exchange for money.



The system works by Excellence introducing its customers to the South Korean firm, and the firm finding a suitable clinic for the medical procedures to take place, as well as a surrogate, if requested. Excellence has been in operation since 1996 and provides sperm to infertile couples and single women. Its new service was introduced after a female client of the company arranged to have a surrogate child herself, using a South Korean woman as the surrogate and a South Korean broker. Excellence approached the broker with a view to working together on future arrangements.



Yuji Sasaki, who heads the company, said that he was unaware of any other Japanese company that provided a similar service. He explained that the average total cost for a surrogate birth in South Korea could amount to around 10 million Yen, which he estimates to be less than half the cost of arranging a surrogacy via the US, as has tended to happen in the past. He also said that clients might prefer to use South Korean women as surrogates because of the closer geographical location and also because, if the surrogate donated her egg to a Japanese couple, the baby 'would still look Asian'.



The news comes in the same week as the finding that more than eight out of ten South Koreans oppose the idea of using surrogate mothers, according to a report conducted by a Hallym University research team and submitted to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.



In a survey of 1000 adults, the researchers found that 83.4 per cent were opposed to the use of surrogacy for financial gain and 83.3 per cent were against all forms of surrogacy. More than 89 per cent of women respondents said they would not ever consider being a surrogate, even if asked by a family member. Fifty-seven per cent said that when surrogacy is used, the commissioning mother should be recognised as the legal mother, while 41.7 per cent said this should be the birth mother.

[ Full Article ]

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).



Italy's laws, said to be the most restrictive in Europe, were passed in December 2003 to counter the country's reputation for being the 'Wild West' of fertility treatments. The law restricts the provision of fertility treatments to 'stable heterosexual couples' who live together and are of childbearing age, and who are shown to be clinically infertile. Research using human embryos is prohibited, as well as embryo freezing, gamete donation, surrogacy, and the provision of any fertility treatments for single women or same-sex couples. The law 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, increasing the risk of multiple births. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis and prenatal screening for genetic disorders are banned.



Italian citizens were given the opportunity earlier this month to abrogate some of the parts of this law, in a referendum held on 12 and 13 June. They were asked to vote on four elements of the law, including language that gives embryos full legal recognition as persons, the three embryo limit, and rules governing embryo research and gamete donation. The Catholic Church encouraged abstention on moral grounds, while the 'yes' campaign has based its message on choice and safety, particularly for women. A 'yes' vote would have repealed the four provisions, but for the results of the referendum to be legitimated, a 50 per cent turnout was required - only 25.9 per cent of Italians voted, although the results showed that for all four questions, about 80 per cent of those who did vote wanted the law to be overturned.



Dr Laura Rienzi, from the Reproductive Medicine department of the European Hospital, Rome, reported results on the comparison of ICSI cycles in the four months directly after the new legislation came into force and the corresponding period of the previous year. The results of the study showed that the cumulative pregnancy rate (taking into account the use of both fresh and frozen embryos) was 38.7 per cent in the pre-law period compared to 30.2 per cent in the post-law period. This difference became even more obvious in younger patients with good ovarian response: 48.9 per cent compared to 26.6 per cent. Dr Rienzi said that the difference in success rates is probably down to the different qualities of the embryos being transferred - when embryos could be frozen, and more than three could be created in any one time, doctors were able to choose the best to implant. The new law's 'requirement to transfer all the embryos obtained, without any selection, has reduced the chances of obtaining a full term pregnancy', she said.

[ Full Article ]

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. 

The findings of the research, presented at the annual Society for Endocrinology BES (British Endocrine Societies) meeting in Yorkshire and led by Dr Waljit Dhillo, showed that after receiving kisspeptin, women whose infertility was caused by the cessation of their menstrual periods began producing reproductive hormones again. Having discovered two years ago that kisspeptin treatment stimulated reproductive hormone release in fertile women, Dr Dhillo turned his research to infertile women. 

Kisspeptin is produced during puberty and triggers the release of sex hormones, without which humans and animals would miss puberty and remain sexually immature. Conversely, over-activation of kisspeptin's receptor GPR54 causes early onset puberty.

The study at Imperial College included ten women who were not menstruating, five of whom were given kisspeptin, and the other five were given saline solution. Blood tests of those who received the kisspeptin revealed that there had been a 48-fold increase in the production of lutenising hormone, and a 16-fold increase in follicle stimulating hormone, both key sex hormones for ovulation and fertility. These results were far higher than those previously gathered for fertile women.

'This is a very exciting result and suggests that kisspeptin treatment could restore reproductive function in women with low sex hormone levels. Our future research will focus on determining the best protocol for repeated administration with the hope of developing a new therapy for infertility' said Dr Dhillo. 

Professor Richard Anderson, a fertility expert from the University of Edinburgh said that the research held the promise of a more subtle way of treating women whose reproductive systems had 'shut down'. Where most current treatments involve the direct stimulation of a woman's ovaries which carries a risk of multiple births and side effects, kisspeptin would potentially address the underlying problem and maintain the body's own protective regulatory mechanisms. Professor Anderson believes the hormone 'may well become a mainstream part of therapy'.

[ Full Article ]

[ Full Article ]

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 ]

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 ]

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

• Continued medical education, regional trainings,web-based learning, Certificate/PG diploma courses
• Networking of professionals in the clinical embryology in India
• Representation before legislative and regulatory bodies.
• Establishment of laboratory practice guidelines.
• Develop a code of conduct and high standards of routine lab procedures
• Support the research activities of embryologists through collaborations with reproductive biology research groups in india and abroad
• Consulting link-ups and experts who are on hand to fellow ACE members for consulting and troubleshooting.
• To enable the clinical embryology practitioners the basic knowledge in life sciences and medicine so as to deal with the gametes and embryos with utmost responsibilities and ethical manner.

 

The office bearers and committee members wellcomes you to join ACE – India.

[ Full Article ]