Infertility affecting most couples: Medical experts
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, December 26
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intrauterine insemination (IUI) are the most common forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART) known to people. But over the years the medical science has developed more specific techniques, including pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS), pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS) and embryoscope to check prevention of transmission of any genetic disease.
Medical experts said, “Infertility is a generic disease affecting most couples falling in the age group of 30-40 years. Sometimes it becomes more complex due to the interrelation of parents’ gamete with critical genetic diseases. It is estimated that prevalence rate of birth defects in India is 64.4 per 1,000 live births.”
Experts said, “Scarcity of proper technological infrastructure to pre-screen for any genetic abnormality and lack of national newborn screening programme until recently has led to a distending proportion of the Indian population ailing with genetic diseases, including sickle cell anaemia and thalassemia. These conditions pose a significant burden in India, and are known to be predominant in specific sub-regions of north and west India. Down syndrome is another genetic disorder, which is the major cause of mental retardation, with a frequency of approximately 1 in 1,000 births.”
Dr Jasmine Kaur, infertility expert, said, “Technological advancements, including the PGS and PGD in assisted reproduction play a crucial role in helping couples reach their parenthood goal by pre-curing any genetic disorders in newborn babies. The PGS is a definitive screening process used to determine any abnormality in chromosomal number of an embryo for couples, recurrent abortions, recurrent implantation failure or severe male factor infertility.”
She said, “The PGD helps assess embryos for any genetic disorder and reduces the risk of passing on any genetic condition of parents to the baby. After this diagnosis, only the unaffected embryos are implanted during the IVF cycle for a safe and assured pregnancy.”
Dr Jasmine said, “Genetic disorders in newborn babies are critical to cure. Here, parents can be the carriers of any genetic disease and it can therefore get passed on to their children – affecting them directly or being a carrier or not effecting at all. Therefore, there is no particular way to detect any genetic abnormality through normal conception. However, we can pre-diagnose this with the PGD and PGS and assure a healthy child without any criticality after checking for chromosomal abnormalities in the DNA of the embryo cells. These identified embryos without any chromosomal abnormalities are picked to be placed in the womb of the mother to ensure a successful conception.”
Sharing a unique case study done at Nova IVF Fertility, Dr Jasmine said, “Here, we have witnessed wonders where a thalassemia-affected child from Gujarat was cured by creating a ‘Saviour sibling’ through IVF using pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT) technology to detect and remove the genetic disorder. Earlier, the PGS was used to screen for Down Syndrome and the PGD was used to screen for any other genetic disease. Now, both these tests fall under the larger umbrella of the PGT.”
