To think we don’t know the long term impacts of ivf

[Redteapot67]

I read shocking research (albeit in the daily fail) today that ivf children are x6 more likely to have hypertension, which of course puts them at risk of cardiovascular disease.
It’s a stark reminder the first ivf baby is only 40 years old - we have no idea about the long term impacts on a baby of being born this way which I find frightening.
Please - I just want to discuss this if you are going to be upset by the debate look at another thread.
My personal take is that despite the possible unknown health risks if ivf were my only route to having a baby I would have it.

I'd be more concerned with the emotional fallout of repeated IVF cycling. I was lucky myself but often wonder where my head would be at if it hadn't worked. Def more of a consequence for the woman than the child in my experience.

My children are in great health ,if they get high blood pressure I'm sure they will cope and adjust to look after themselves. Same as everyone else does.

When you think about the huge challenges that an IVF embryo goes through before it even gets implanted into the uterus, I always imagine that IVF babies must come from super tough stock and be stronger than average. I'm sure the science won't back me up on that though.

Still, I like to think that my ivf DD, and my Dsis's ivf DS will grow up to be super heroes

plus women drink during pregnancy now too which they wouldn’t have done 40 years ago so it’s hard to know the impact of lots of things really.

Surely that's back to front? Women have drunk during pregnancy through most of history (in countries where alcohol consumption exists). Centuries ago people drank ale for breakfast. And every other meal. It's only in recent years that people have been advised to totally abstain during pregnancy.

The bigger risk is ICSI rather than IVF in general but really, long term it would take decades to be able to attribute long term health problems in mother or child. Risks with everything you don’t do and everything you do.

gertrude my mother didn’t have trouble convincing me, I didn’t have trouble conceiving dd1 it was only after an infection I lost my tubes and needs ivf so that argument kind of falls flat.

Generally in IVF the doctor doen’t choose a sperm, lots of sperms are put is a dish with an egg so there is still the element of the fittest reaching the sperm. ICSI is the exception to this and I believe more problems are associated with it.

I think access to the internet and social media are far bigger threats to our collective health than IVF, and equally we know nothing about long term exposure...what with the www being only about 25 years old.

People of the future are undoubtedly going think we made some very poor decisions...and IVF may well turn out to be one of them.

Nobody can do better than make decisions with the info they have at the time though!

Research has already shown that babies born from IVF are showing more ‘birth defects’ higher risk of SN and generally more health related issues.
As far as I know, We dint know a lot about how fertile those IVF babies will be.

So yes there is a question to ask and we don’t have enough data yet to actually really ‘know’
I personally think that with IVF we are bypassing a natural selection process. Even more so with ICSI. And that doing so will lead to more ‘genetic related’ issues (NOT genetic disease but any health issue that has a genetic component iyswim)

However, one point that is important.
I do NOT think that all babies born from IVF will have some health issues. The title the OP is alluding is scary. But if this is moving the normal risk of CVD is normally 1 in 10.000 and has been multiplied by 6 to be 6 in 10.000, wouod people generally be that worried about the increase??
And I dont think that this wouod mean couples shouldn’t use IVF ever either.

I do think this means we need to look a bit more carefully at we are actually doing with IVF and what are the long term effect. (Esp in a society where fertility overall seems to be declining). Long term effect being what happens to those children once they are adults but also what happens to their own children.

The study looked at fewer than 100 subjects though - that's far too small a sample size from which to draw any meaningful conclusion!

I knew this would come up It's a common misconception that a small sample size = unreliable results.

It's an interesting study, limited by only looking at a specific population, but you can't just dismiss it out of hand like that.

I think as the first gen of ivf babies have babies and their babies have babies it should make for some interesting research. Will they also have problems conceiving? Will we be storing up possible health problems? What about the mothers health from all the drugs?

It’s a hugely amazing thing for those who cannot conceive naturally but of course it’s far too soon in the scientific world to know if what we are doing is truly good or bad. It truest is a lifeline I just hope it’s a good thing we seem to have come so far on a life at any cost I do sometimes wonder ethically and that includes just how much we pump into bodies that are giving up and will be permanently damaged and needing constant care for 50+ years unable to walk/talk/eat or even breath alone.

Redteapot76, yes she stuck! A miracle indeed. (Over two attempts and 45 eggs, she was the only able to be put back.)

Itsear there are more issues with ICSI because it’s used when the sperm quality isn’t good.
Which means it’s very hard to say if any issue you notice is due to sperm issues (eg genetic) or the the process itself.

Reading the Daily Mail is probably more likely to damage your health than IVF...!

actually i agree on the internet usage - if you look at any town centre they are massively in decline. The social impact of not be able to go out to the shops anymore will be massive. I think that’ll be within the next 10 years or so too.

Reading the Daily Mail is probably more likely to damage your health than IVF...!

Yup!

Love all the amateur fertility specialists on this thread

Aw a mummy - really glad. Little miracle baby for sure

@hermionegoesbackhome
I would like to read this study - have 2 ivf children and am very interested

Thanks redteapot

I get irritated by the small sample size comments too. They come up all rhe time

the theory makes sense to me. in nature the strongest sperm fertilizes the egg. in ivf the sperm the doctor chose fertilizes the egg. logic suggests that this could cause health problems

In ICSI the dr choses the sperm. And 95% of embryo development is driven by the health of the egg, not the sperm. Most sperm are up to the job, if not the embryo would tend not develop/implant anyway.

I agree that there are some unknowns about the future health of the child. But so far, nothing major definitive has come to light. I will be forever grateful to IVF.

Research has already shown that babies born from IVF are showing more ‘birth defects’ higher risk of SN and generally more health related issues
As far as I know, We dint know a lot about how fertile those IVF babies will be

Links please

Typical scaremongering. Probably intended to appeal to the usual DM-reading "Why should my taxes be used to pay for that?" brigade.

The study group was far too small for any meaningful conclusions to be drawn from it. Much information also seems to have either been left out of the article or research was not carried out at all.

For instance (and off the top of my head) - did they check the blood pressure of all of the parents, and was there any correlation between the results and those of the two groups of children? Presumably things like a tendency to high blood pressure can be inherited just as much with IVF as with natural conception. One would need to know whether or not the parents of the IVF children had heart conditions or a higher average blood pressure than the control group parents. One would have to rule that out before concluding that IVF was the cause of high blood pressure in the children.

Were all the IVF children a random sample, or were they already part of an ongoing study group (in itself likely to induce stress in children), or were they all conceived at the same clinic?

Were the parents' infertility problems all different, or very similar?

What was the average age of the parents in each group?

The study being reported on is considered unreliable due to small sample size and biased sampling. The Fail hates IVF. However, it is correct to say that any potential longer term effects are still largely unknown, which as a mum of a child conceived by ICSI is worrying.

And yes I think the 2 main issues personally are - women failing to have a child as a result of ivf and trying multiple multiple times well that’s going to really impact mental health and then any woman (whether child is produced or not) who has gone through ivf and the impact of all the hormones (I would imagine the more egg collections the higher risk)

This is a bit worrying even if it is a Daily Mail article. Only applies to those who were unsuccessful though.

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4307144/How-failed-IVF-turn-heart-risk.html