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Infertility Linked to Higher Birth Defect Risk

As assisted reproductive technologies (ART) treatments have developed, treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF) have become more accessible to a wider population. Accordingly, the number of women using fertility treatments to conceive has increased such that in 2012, roughly 1.5 percent of all liveborn infants in the United States were conceived using some method of ART.

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Effect of Fertility on Perinatal Outcomes

The impact of ART in a fertile setting cannot be studied because otherwise fertile women cannot be randomly assigned to IVF treatment due to ethical concerns. Recent advances in technology, however, could present an opportunity. Couples with proven fertility may elect to undergo preimplantation genetic testing, and the perinatal outcome of these pregnancies could be used to evaluate an unstudied group: fertile women utilizing ART. An adverse impact observed among them could represent the adverse impact of ART itself.

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Ectopic Pregnancy From Assisted Reproduction Keeps Falling Also, no association between ART and offspring’s long-term academic performance

Nikolaos Polyzos, MD, PhD, of the Centre for Reproductive Medicine in Belgium, and colleagues found that ectopic pregnancies (EP) declined over a period of 12 years following ART (crude odds ratio 0.96 per year, 95% CI 0.95-0.97), even after adjusting for potential confounders (adjusted OR 0.97 per year, 95% CI 0.95-0.98).

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Children Born After Assisted Reproduction at No Greater Risk for Cancer, Study Finds

Children born as a result of assisted reproduction (ART) are at no greater risk of cancer than children born spontaneously in the general population, according to results of one of the largest ever cohort studies of ART children. “This is reassuring news for couples considering assisted conception, their subsequent children, fertility specialists and for the wider public health,” said the investigators.

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The Coming Culture War Over Fertility Technology

Abortion is currently the most fevered issue in American life, sometimes even surpassing questions of national security and defense, the economy, international terrorism, health care, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, drug usage, and education.

While we know the shorthand linguistic terms employed in the never-ending public argument over abortion — pro-choice, pro-life, personhood, “war against women,” family values, Roe v. Wade, sanctity of life, “safe, legal and rare” — there is an emerging issue with a three-letter abbreviation that may soon dominate our religious, political and cultural debates: assisted reproductive technology, or ART.

Just as abortion has divided our nation, ART could do the same, especially as it becomes better known and more widely practiced in America.

ART offers women — heterosexual, lesbian, single, or married — a method to become pregnant through a complex procedure involving anonymous donor sperm. A recent Religion News Service story indicated that 30,000-60,000 donor-conceived children are born each year in the United States and as the technology improves, that number will grow.

Read full article.

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ASRM and SART Respond to ART Linkage Study Published in New England Journal of Medicine

Leaders of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology reacted today to a new publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.  The article links the annual registry of assisted reproductive technology cycles with individuals to show the overall cumulative success rate of ART procedures to be 57%.