Manas
Times,
India’s first sperm bank has completed eight
years. And during this time, 500 children have been born
by what is known as Therapeutic Insemination by Donor
(TID). Some of the couple have come back for their second
baby. This shows that the initial inhibitions about TID
have vanished.
TID has emerged as a sure shot remedy for male infertility
and is a boon for childless couples where the husband
is infertile for various reasons.
When this sperm bank was established at Malpani Infertility
Clinic in Colaba, it was the first time that cryopreserved
semen was used. Till than doctors were using fresh semen
for donor insemination. However, with the advent of
AIDS and the knowledge that the HIV virus can be transmitted
in the semen, they realised that it was becoming increasingly
dangerous to use fresh semen because it was still not
possible to test for HIV.
After liquefaction, the semen sample is mixed with
an equal quantity of the cryoprotectant medium, a chemical
which prevents the sperm form being damaged even at
very low temperatures, and is loaded into plastic straws.
These are uniquely coded and sealed and then placed
in steel containers of liquid nitrogen where they are
frozen to -196 degree Celsius. The next day one straw
is removed and thawed to see how the sperms survived
the cold (cryosurvival). Only samples which contain
at least 25 to 40 million sperm are accepted.
Talking to MANAS TIMES, Dr. Anirudh Malpani said: “The
sperm are then kept in cold storage for 3 to 6 month,
which is how long it take for the HIV virus, which causes
AIDS, to become detectable in a person’s blood
after infection. This is called the quarantine period,
during which the samples are not touched. The donor’s
blood is then re-tested for HIV, hepatitis and STDs’
and only those samples which come from negative donors
are used for treating infertile couples.”
The donors are healthy men between 20 and 40 years
of age, form a sound background and usually graduates.
Semen samples are taken form those who are healthy,
with no family history of illness. The donor’s
identity is kept strictly confidential, Dr. Malpani
informed.
Success statistics mimic nature. They are 10% in a
25-year-old woman in one cycle; so that over six treatment
cycle the chance of pregnancy is about 60% in a 25-year
old. The chances of success are higher if the female
partner is young and has no fertility problems. Once
a women gets pregnant, the pregnancy is like a normal
pregnancy, with the same risks of miscarriage and birth
defects as any other.
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