'Marriages within family leading to infertility in next generation'

Abu Dhabi - The GCC has 6-7 million infertile couples in the 20-40 age groups, experts said.

Doctors and experts at the two-day conference on 'Enhancing Success Rates in Assisted Reproductive Technology' said the women in Gulf region have lower number of eggs and have problems getting pregnant.
The forum by IVI Middle East Fertility Clinic showcased unique approaches and treatments in reproductive medicine and also addressed region-specific challenges in infertility treatments.
Incidence of infertility is growing in the region, experts said. The GCC has 6-7 million infertile couples in the 20-40 age groups, they noted during the conference in Abu Dhabi.
The main reason, they said, are marriages happening inside the family - parental consanguinity, which affects the next generation.
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The conference was held under the patronage of UAE Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan.
He said the Spanish-based IVI Middle East Fertility Clinic has helped many patients in the UAE.
"It is their good fortune to live in the twenty-first century marked as it is by scientific advances that offer infinitely more hope than ever before.  Nonetheless, the wonders of science become wonderful to them only when they enable a pregnancy, a pregnancy that to them has proved frustratingly impossible.  Their hope may be one of the most intense hopes known to human beings. Our goal in the UAE is to be innovative in improving all aspects of the health of our families and their children," Shaikh Nahyan said.
Also read: Late marriages, career reasons for infertility in UAE?
IVI Middle East Fertility Clinic was opened last year in Abu Dhabi and has celebrated 100 successful pregnancies with a success rate of over 70 per cent. IVI has now established a facility in Dubai.
"Our goal is to set up five IVF clinics in the Middle East by 2017," IVI Middle East chairman Suresh Soni said.
IVI Middle East medical director Human Fatemi said the main idea is to 'bring here the science and research done in the West.'
"We were, so far, copy pasting what the West did. Now, research can be done locally. Major problem we are facing in the GCC countries are with women who have lower number of eggs. When a woman is born she has a certain number of eggs but what we observed here is that their ovary is aging faster than others. So we need to find methods to help such women."
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He pointed out how local research helped to find the main problem seen among the UAE families.
"None of my colleagues did research here. It was then we thought people here might have different problem. So we found the reason for people in the UAE for not having babies. The major reason we found out is marriage within the family. It isn't a problem for the parents but one for the next generation. They will have problems in having children."
IVI Spain medical director Antonio Pellicer said they are trying to find a way to help older woman with delivery.
"We are trying to rejuvenate ovaries. As women decide to have babies at an older age or they have reduced number of eggs in their ovaries like observed in this region. So, we are trying to make the ovaries younger. For those who want to get pregnant but don't have enough eggs there are only two possibilities. One has been experimented only in animals, which is to create eggs out of stem cells. Then it's reconverted into immature cells and from them they become eggs. These eggs can be fertilised and converted into embryos. This will take few years but it can be successful in humans too."
The other alternative, he said, is to 'mobilise'.
"In the ovaries there are small follicles sleeping, which we call dormant follicles and they are there in menopausal women. Our technique tries to mobilise these dormant follicles and make them grow."
About the methods, he said: "The first one is more promising. With these techniques 30 per cent of such patients can become pregnant."
Mats Brannstrom, who is the first doctor to do womb transplant, said: "We took a uterus from a 60 year-old woman and put it on a 35 year-old with good eggs and she got pregnant and delivered. So the age factor is on the ovary and not the womb."
All doctors agreed about greater risks of getting pregnant in old age, including birth defects.
"Risks are miscarriage and down syndrome, and old age mean 38 and more. After 38, the percentage of abnormal eggs goes up. Fertilisation is combination of chromosomes of man and woman. The chromosomes of woman get older with age. A 25-year-old will have 0.3% of chance of having a baby with abnormality but a 45-year-old will have 40 per cent chance. When you are close to menopause most of the eggs are of bad quality," Fatemi said.
The conference saw huge turnout of region's doctors, experts, embryologists and technicians from the field of infertility treatments.
The Abu Dhabi clinic offers a comprehensive range of fertility treatments with use of the latest technologies and highly personalised treatments that are specifically designed to address the growing incidence of infertility in the region.
ashwani@khaleejtimes.com

• Abu Dhabi