Women expecting a baby or planning a pregnancy are being offered a fast-growing array of tests to check if they are carriers for hundreds of mostly rare genetic diseases, as reported in the January 6th issue of the Wall Street Journal.
Such genetic testing, called carrier screening, has long been targeted mainly at people of certain ethnic groups such as …
This is one of a series of news items from abstracts of studies presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine as complied by Dr. David Meldrum, Scientific Director of Reproductive Partners. We appreciate the enormous amount of work it takes to compile and comment on these abstracts.
The occurrence of a serious genetic disease …
According to a survey of 26 sperm banks reported in the July 2010 edition of Fertility and Sterility, sperm banks vary considerably in their practices of genetic screening of donors.
Cystic fibrosis carrier screening, chromosome analyses, and hemoglobin evaluations are performed on the majority of sperm donor applicants. Tay-Sachs disease carrier screening is performed on most donors with Jewish heritage but …