The
Independent,
Ranjna Majumdar/ Mumbai
For 56-year-old S Singh from village Barddi near
Patna it was a tough decision. Doctors declared that his
sperm count was too low to impregnate his wife, while
social pressures decreed that he and his wife produce
a child soon. So without informing his family about the
real reason of his trip and with many personal misgivings,
he and his wife came to Mumbai and checked into a fertility
clinic. Two months and three cycles later his wife was
pregnant thanks to some donor sperm. While Singh was happy
about the pregnancy, he was honest enough to admit his
frustration at not being the biological father. "It
is something that I will have to learn to forget,"
says he.
S Singh like millions of other Indian men suffers from
testicular failure which means that there is no sperm
present in their semen. Testicular failure attributed
to undescended testes, physical trauma to the testes,
to mumps and to several other inexplicable reasons,
is the main reason that these men have to resort to
donor sperm. However, research over the past few years
has shown that despite the absence of sperm in their
semen, these men do produce immature spermatozoa in
their testes. This immature spermatozoa, if retrieved
and injected into the egg, can achieve fertilization
and normal development of the embryo. "The technique
has revolutionised the whole field of assisted pregnancies,"
says Dr Anirudh Malpani, of the Malpani Infertility
Clinic where the technique was introduced a week ago.
The clinic has already reported 11 successful fertilizations
so far thanks to this new medical procedure called ICSI
(Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection).
Under ICSI, sperm or their precursors, spermatids,
are extracted directly from the testis. This is a minor
surgical procedure which is done under local anaesthesia.
The testicular tissue is then processed in the laboratory
and sperm are recovered from these. One of these sperm
is then injected into an egg, to achieve fertilisation.
In the tests conducted so far fertilization rates in
the range of 60 per cent have been achieved - which
means that of 100 micro-injected eggs, 60 formed embryos
after ICSI. The pregnancy rate in one ICSI cycle is
absent 25 to 30 per cycle ie chances of an embryo so
created after ICSI growing into a baby are about 25
to 30 per cent "which, says Malpani, "is the
success rate in normal pregnancy."
Talking about the possibility of ICSI taking over as
the preferred procedure over donor inseminations, Anirudh
Malpani says, "Of course all couples would prefer
ICSI rather than DI. But the problem here is of finances,
each cycle costs about Rs 80,000 as opposed to Rs 50,
000 for DI." Couples like S Singh however are willing
to bear the cost, says S Singh, "If my wife permitted
I would like to go in far a second child using ICSI."
It is a feeling echoed by many young couples looking
to add their own bit of eternity to this world.
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