Risk increases of one-third to one-half are classified as high risk, analogous to the medical definition of side effects. This is highly significant for children who were conceived using in vitro fertilization (IVF), and even more so considering that too little has been systematically examined for them until after the age of 20.
The review begins by referring to the societal relevance of IVF-induced health problems (1). For this purpose, the risk of preterm birth should be broken down not only to earlier than 37 weeks but also to 30 weeks and earlier. This level of prematurity will carry a high cost burden on society. The same applies to the limit of birth weight of lower than 2500g. The risks of lower than 2000g, or lower than 1000g, are much more relevant. Such levels of prematurity have a significant impact on cognitive and psychosocial development. The mentioned brain malformations are too course of a parameter by far (1).
High blood pressure in patients conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF) is classified as “functional.” Here, it is more realistic to speak of vascular damage, which the two reproductive medicine authors refer to as “the blood vessel thickness was higher.” With meta-analyses, vascular damage is missed as an essential risk because it is not examined enough. In addition, a Swiss cardiologist (2) diagnosed that hypertension after IVF was more likely to require treatment by a factor of 6 already during adolescence. The conclusion: vascular aging or arteriosclerosis is significantly increased in childhood/adolescence.
This was reported in detail in the Deutsches Ärzteblatt (3) but not in gynecological / reproductive medicine journals.
The search terms “risk of arteriosclerosis”, “premature vascular aging” and “cancer risk” are missing. Regarding the latter, study results from Israel (4) have shown: the baseline risk for children who were conceived using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to develop cancer within 10 years was 0.6%.
Conclusion: IVF risks are high. Indeed, IVF bypasses complex selection mechanisms for optimal quality selection of successful sperm set up by evolution.
IVF activities immediately require long-term follow-up.
Footnotes
Conflict of interest statement
The author declares that no conflict of interest exists.
References
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