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DNA test would take guesswork out of IVF
An Australian-led team is using “DNA profiling” to identify viable embryos from the ones that won’t grow into babies, according to a report in the journal, Human Reproduction. Researchers from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, say that their analysis of the DNA of IVF-produced embryos may radically increase pregnancy rates.
In a study of 48 IVF patients at a hospital in Athens, Greece, the team took cells from the surface layer of 5-day-old embryos, called blastocysts, prior to transfer. Some patients received one embryo and others more. Of those 48 women, 25 had a total of 37 babies.
The researchers took DNA samples from the newborns, and used DNA profiling to determine which babies grew from which embryos. The scientists looked for differences in patterns of gene expression between the embryos that grew into babies, and those that did not.
They found 7317 sets of genetic instructions that were expressed by the viable embryos, but not by the embryos that failed to go to maturity. These transcripts included some that play a role in cell adhesion and cell communication.
The Monash team is now focused on reducing those transcripts to five or ten "marker" genes, that can be used to accurately predict that a transferred embryo will become a baby. The goal is a test that fertility specialists could use to pick a couple's most viable embryo for transfer and could be ready in two years.
If it pans out, such a test could help reduce the incidence of multiples, by making the outcome of a single-embryo transfer more dependable.
Color Me Infertile? Why Paint and Sperm Don’t Mix
Because the world isn’t hostile enough to sperm, now comes news that men regularly exposed to glycol solvents, commonly found in paint, risk a 250% increase in risk to their gametes.
A joint study between the University of Manchester and the University of Sheffield in England, looked at 2,000 men at 14 fertility clinics. The subjects were divided into two groups: those with sperm motility problems and those without. After accounting for other lifestyle factors that are known to play a role in compromising sperm function, e.g., smoking, wearing tight underwear, testicular surgery and manual work, as well as exposure to other workplace chemicals, researchers confirmed that the glycol ethers were the culprits, reported the BBC.
Glycol ethers are widely used as solvents in water-based paints. The risk to do-it-yourselfers isn’t significant. Researchers of the Occupational and Environment Medicine study tied the drop in motility – a sperm’s critical ability to move – to workplace exposure.
Debunking the HRT Hype
First, it was the best thing to happen to women of a certain age. Then after years of using hormone replacement therapy, The National Institutes of Health pulled the plug on its long-term HRT study, because of the potential increase in the risk for heart disease, invasive breast cancer and other health problems.
Menopausal women gritted their teeth and braced for the full complement of the well-chronicled effects of what is euphemistically referred to as “the change.”
And so, it is with surprise, tinged with weariness, that women are now told that the risks aren’t that great, and that those in the early stages of menopause shouldn’t worry too much about taking the drugs.
Such are the findings of a team of experts who issued a consensus statement about the safety and effectiveness of HRT.
Amos Pines, chair of the International Menopause Society (IMS), announced at a global summit in Madrid that after he and his colleagues reviewed numerous related studies of HRT, they found no increase in the risk of heart disease among women between 50 and 59 years of age. And because the original NIH study called the Women’s Health Initiative, focused on the same group of women over a long period of time, many of the health problems that manifested could be associated with increasing age and other health conditions.
The IMS announcement sparked immediate controversy. Valerie Beral, a University of Oxford epidemiologist, said the IMS review was not valid because it only looked at a fraction of the evidence, adding that regulatory bodies worldwide recommend HRT only for short-term use. IMS' review only "quote[s] a small number of the very large studies that have been done," Beral said, adding, "The review does not agree with regulatory bodies in the United Kingdom, U.S. or Europe who have reviewed the totality of the evidence."
Diabetes + Erectile Dysfunction = Heart Disease Risk?
Listen up: Men who’ve got diabetes and ED better be on the lookout for cardiac problems. Those guys were twice as likely to develop a serious heart problem as diabetics who didn’t suffer with ED.
Researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, recruited 2,306 men, about one quarter of them already having trouble maintaining an erection. None had any obvious signs of heart disease, or stroke.
Over the next four years, 123 men either suffered a heart attack, died from heart disease, developed chest pain linked to clogged arteries, or ended up needing a heart bypass or cardiac catheterization. Those with erectile dysfunction were approximately twice as likely to end up in this group compared to those with normal sexual performance.
Lead researcher Dr Peter Chun-Yip Tong said high blood sugar levels could lead to inflammation on the inner surface of blood vessels - which could lead to atherosclerosis, the hardening and furring up of both heart arteries, and to those supplying blood to the penis.
"The development of erectile dysfunction should alert both patients and healthcare providers to the future risk of coronary heart disease,” Dr. Tong said in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Cheers and Furor as UK Allows Hybrid Embryo Creation for Researcher
While critics denounced the moral catastrophe they say is inherent in creating embryos by combining human and animal tissue, scientific researchers and supporters cheered the possibility of creating stem cell lines for the study of disease and, hopefully, the discovery of cures.
The hybrid embryos would be kept up to 14 days to allow for the harvest of stem cells. That would open the door to intensified research in intractable, incurable and devastating diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
In April, British scientists at Newcastle University created hybrid embryos by removing virtually all the genetic material from cows’ eggs, and injecting DNA derived from human skin cells.
Researchers say these human-animal "admixed" embryos, could help solve the current problem of the lack of human eggs from which to generate embryos.
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