destiny. the IVF births may be different, genetically, than those born naturally.
Wikimedia Commons / Ekem
SAN DIEGO -When Louise Brown was born July 25, 1978, she began an era. the first "test tube baby" is a mother herself now, and she was joined by millions of others born with the help of in vitro fertilization (IVF). at a press conference this morning at the annual meeting of the American Association for the advancement of Science (which publishes Science NOW), infertility specialists talked about whether people who were conceived by in vitro fertilization may be healthy.
"Basically, the children are fine. It's not like the kids have extra arms or extra heads or anything," says Carmen Sapienza, a geneticist at Temple University in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania. But nothing is older than their early 30s, and the vast majority are aged under 20, so they had no time for long-term health problems arise.
one source of concern is that so many IVF babies have low birth weight. children conceived through IVF are more likely to weigh less than 2.5 kg are that babies conceived naturally. This is not only because that so many IVF babies are twins or other multiple births; the same is true for single babies This could cause future problems because of low birth weight babies often have health problems. long term. they are more likely to be obese, have diabetes and have high blood pressure when they are 50, for example.
In this spirit, Sapienza and colleagues examined the genes that may play a role in these conditions. They examined the genes involved in glucose metabolism and insulin, for example, to see if there is a difference in how these genes are expressed in children born of IVF and children who were conceived naturally.
The result? 5% to 10% of these genes, DNA methylation patterns, which affect how genes are expressed, are different between IVF and non-IVF children. There is no way to know if this is because of the technology used to produce IVF babies or if the difference has something to do with the problem of infertility underlying the parents. It is also unclear whether these differences in gene expression will translate into health differences. But he suggests that IVF children are unique to a certain level.
"In my view, more data is better," says Sapienza. "People get angry" about the data that sounds like an attack on IVF. But if it turns out that children who were conceived by IVF have a higher risk of, say, colon cancer, he said, it would be useful to tell them to get tested earlier.
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