In Vitro fertilization: fly – it's cheaper!
Belgian scientists have announced the beginning of the era of cheap IVF
The authors of the technology presented at the annual conference of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), which ends on July 10 in London, announced the beginning of a "new era of affordable IVF" intended for residents of developing countries of the world, EurekAlert reports! (IVF for 200 euro per cycle).
The authors achieved simplification and reduction in the cost of the procedure due to the rejection of the use of expensive medical equipment at the stage of embryo cultivation before transplantation into the uterus – incubators that maintain a constant level of carbon dioxide, air purification systems, cylinders with specially purified medical gas. Instead, a team from the Genk Institute for Fertility Technology (Genk, Belgium), led by Professor Willem Ombelet, gets carbon dioxide right on the spot by mixing cheap citric acid and baking soda. As Ombele noted, quoted by the BBC, "we succeeded with the help of, in fact, Alka-Seltzer."
The effectiveness of the new method turned out to be comparable with the standard embryo cultivation system during IVF. Clinical trials of the technology began in 2012, as of May 31, 2013, 12 healthy children were born thanks to it. The indicators of embryo survival rates and pregnancies (34.8 and 30.4 percent, respectively) turned out to be approximately similar to the usual IVF procedure.
According to the authors, the cost of one cycle of simplified IVF can be about 200 euros, which is 10-15 percent of the cost of a standard procedure. At the same time, the authors point out that their proposed technique cannot completely replace all modern assisted reproductive technologies, for example, it cannot help with severe forms of male infertility when ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) procedure is required.
The authors hope that the cheaper and more accessible IVF procedure will help residents of the poorest countries in the world, in most of which female infertility is a heavy burden leading to ostracism, aggression, violence against such women from society. According to the World Health Organization, about two million married couples face the problem of infertility in developing countries.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru12.07.2013