One of the questions hanging over modern infertility treatments is whether babies created through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) grow up as healthy as babies conceived the old-fashioned way. A new study indicates that, for the most part, they seem to, although it does raise a couple of concerns.
Although some studies have suggested such babies may be slightly more prone to birth defects, most have found no reasons for serious concerns. But there hasn't really been much research following these children into adulthood.
In the study, researchers at the Eastern Virginia Medical School's Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, which produced the first US IVF baby in 1981, contacted the first 417 patients treated at the clinic and asked if they could survey the 560 offspring that were conceived. The researchers received responses from 173 of the children, who ranged in age from 18 to 26.
Compared with others in that age group, those conceived through IVF were found to be "healthy and well adjusted, with no prevalence of increased susceptibility to chronic diseases," such as cancer or heart disease, Sergio Oehninger and his colleagues reported in a paper online.
The offspring did, however, report unusually high levels of depression and binge drinking among women and higher levels of attention deficit disorder.
Oehninger and other experts say it's hard to know how to interpret those findings. A variety of factors could have skewed the results, including the fact that because the researchers had no control over who responded to the survey, it's difficult to know if those who did are representative. Also, people who did IVF, especially in the beginning, tended to be more affluent, so it could be that their offspring were just tested more frequently.
The researchers do speculate in the paper, though, that the high level of stress that prospective parents undergoing IVF tend to experience could potentially increase the risk for behavioural problems in their children. So the findings warrant follow-up research to make sure there isn't something real here, they say. - The Washington Post