New Technique Allows HIV-Positive Men To Conceive Safely
Assisted reproduction can safely help HIV-positive men to become fathers without infecting their partners, according to new research from French fertility experts.
But the news is not as good for HIV-positive women. Assisted reproduction techniques do not seem to provide the same success for them, the researchers reported in the journal Human Reproduction.
Dr Jeanine Ohl and her Strasbourg-based team carried out various assisted reproduction techniques on 57 couples in which at least one partner was HIV positive.
For the HIV-positive men with HIV-negative partners, they 'washed' the sperm using two successive techniques that involved separating the motile sperm from the semen and using the sperm that tested negative for insemination.
Nearly a third of the 39 couples where the male was infected became parents with the birth of 14 children to 12 couples. None of the women became infected. Of the three assisted reproductive techniques used - intrauterine insemination (IUI), IVF or ICSI (injection of the egg with a single sperm), ICSI was the most successful, resulting in pregnancies in nearly half of all the embryos transferred. No pregnancies were achieved using IUI.
However, of the 10 HIV-positive women treated, only one became pregnant. Thirty-seven couples are still being treated.
Dr Ohl, a specialist in assisted reproduction techniques for serodiscordant couples at Centre d'AMP de Strasbourg, said: "I was very pleased by the good results for men, but surprised at the poor results for women, which I did not expect. One explanation may be that the men had no fertility problems, but the women did. The women were significantly older than the partners of the seropositive men, and some had waited a long time for this treatment, which only became possible because of changes in the law in France two years ago."