How to avoid genetic diseases in IVF hospitals
The emergence of IVF technology provides a new birth choice for couples suffering from genetic diseases. Through a series of technical means, IVF hospitals help couples select embryos with low genetic risk for transplantation, thus avoiding the inheritance of genetic diseases. The following is a detailed description of how IVF hospitals avoid genetic diseases from four aspects.
Genetic counseling
The IVF hospital has a special genetic consulting department to provide genetic consulting services. Before receiving IVF treatment, couples can learn whether there is a risk of genetic disease in themselves or their families through genetic counseling. A professional genetic consultant will assess the risk of a couple suffering from genetic diseases by asking about their family history, conducting gene testing and other means.
After assessing the risk of genetic diseases in couples, genetic counselors will provide couples with corresponding prevention and treatment programs for genetic diseases. For example, if a family is at risk of genetic diseases, couples can choose to carry out embryonic gene screening or choose sperm donors without risk of genetic diseases, so as to avoid passing on genetic diseases to the next generation.
Genetic counselors also provide psychological counseling to couples to help them understand the risks of genetic diseases, reduce anxiety and stress, and also provide them with education and guidance on disease prevention and treatment programs.
Embryo gene screening
In order to avoid passing on genetic diseases to the next generation, IVF hospitals usually carry out embryonic gene screening. This technology can screen embryos carrying genetic disease genes before embryo transfer, and select healthy embryos for transfer.
There are many methods for embryo gene screening, including gene sequencing, multiple locus amplification, etc. These methods can screen the whole genome of embryos and effectively detect embryos carrying genetic disease genes. Through embryo gene screening, couples can choose embryos with lower genetic risk for transplantation, reducing the chance of passing on genetic diseases to the next generation.
Although embryonic gene screening can effectively avoid the inheritance of genetic diseases, it also has certain risks and limitations. For example, there may be errors in the screening results, failure to detect all potential genetic diseases, and some uncertain results.
Selection of sperm supply or
The IVF hospital also helps couples avoid the inheritance of genetic diseases by selecting sperm donors without risk of genetic diseases. The selection of sperm donor is a passive method of genetic disease prevention. It makes offspring not carry genes of genetic disease by selecting sperm donor without genes of genetic disease.
IVF hospitals will carry out strict screening on sperm donors to ensure that they do not carry genes of genetic diseases. The sperm may come from an anonymous donor or one of the couples. Selection of suitable sperm donors may effectively prevent the transmission of genetic diseases to the next generation.
Although the method of selecting sperm donor can greatly reduce the risk of genetic diseases, couples also need to consider a series of factors when selecting, including the matching degree with sperm donor, ethics, etc.
Scientific and technological innovation
The IVF hospital continues to carry out scientific and technological innovation to improve the effect of avoiding genetic diseases. For example, the IVF Hospital has introduced a new method of embryo gene screening, which improves the accuracy and reliability of screening and enables more genetic diseases to be detected.
In addition to embryo gene screening, IVF hospitals also conduct research on gene editing and other technologies, hoping to achieve a fundamental cure for genetic diseases by changing the genome of embryos. Although these technologies are still in the experimental stage, they undoubtedly provide new hope for the treatment and prevention of genetic diseases.
To sum up, IVF hospitals have effectively avoided the inheritance of genetic diseases and provided the possibility for couples to achieve healthy fertility through measures such as gene counseling, embryo gene screening, sperm supply or selection, and scientific and technological innovation.
