PGD screening may be safe for single births
Filed under: IVF — Alan @ 8:55 am
A new embryo screening test called PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis) has been approved as safe for single pregnancy use, according to information compiled by Belgian researchers.
The researchers looked at a group of 581 children that were born at a Belgian birthing centre over the course of 15 years. Each of the children had been pre-screened with the PGD test. The results showed that the amount of deaths and birth defects were the same as children that were born using typical IVF methods.
The research comes in the midst of concerns that the process, which includes taking out some embryo cells at an early foetal stage, could result in problems during birth.
The Belgian researchers however, reported that when they compared their test subjects to 2,889 children that were born with IVF that did not include PGD, there was no difference in the amount of birth defect rates.
The study found that children who were born via PGD screening had a birth defect rate of about 2.1% while children that were born with other IVF methods had a defect rate of 3.4%.
There was a significant difference in the use of PGD for multiple births versus IVF however, with an 11.7% chance of death for those born with PGD and only 2.5% for IVF methods.
University Hospital Brussels Professor Inge Liebaers, stated that at the moment they are not sure why multiple pregnancies result in such a high death rate with PGD children, but that the numbers are not conclusive due to the small members of case studies.
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