Twin boys procreated from 13-year-old sperm

When I was at the ASRM conference the  beginning of last week, I had the chance to hear the founder of Fertile Hope, Lindsay Nohr Beck, speak on the importance of preserving fertility before going through cancer treatments. Below is a perfect example, although out of Taiwan, for doing just that. I hope that this story spreads HOPE for a future family to others facing the difficult challenges of cancer treatments!

 

Sharon

www.InfertilityAnswers.net

Twin boys procreated from 13-year-old sperm      
Taiwan News 
 
A pair of twin boys procreated from 13-year-old sperm were delivered slightly more than a month ago, marking a major step forward in Taiwan's development of artificial reproductive technology, medical sources said Friday.

"The birth was a record in Taiwan, " said Tseng Chi-jui, dean of Taipei Medical University's College of Medicine, who concurrently heads the school's Center for Reproductive Medicine and Sciences. Never before had a case involving such a long period of time between the freezing of male sperm and procreation been reported in Taiwan, Tseng said.

The father of the twins, identified only by his family name Chen, had to have his sperm frozen in 1995 due to testicular cancer, according to Tseng.
Then a 23-year-old college student, Chen, with his family's support, had his sperm cryopreserved at Taipei Medical University Hospital's sperm bank before undergoing an operation for his cancer and receiving follow-up chemotherapy.

Chen later overcame the cancer, but his ability to produce sperm was never recovered. After getting married early this year, he and his wife wanted to have their own child and so they went back to the samples that had been frozen for 13 years.
With the help of assisted reproduction technology, the mother gave birth in early October to a pair of healthy twin boys at 37 weeks, with one weighing 2,100 grams and the other 2,700 grams, Tseng said.

Tseng, an artificial insemination expert, recalled that he used in vitro fertilization to cultivate four ovas fertilized with Chen's unfrozen sperm, but only two of those eggs reimplanted in his wife's womb survived and grew into babies. Noting that cryopreserved human sperm tend to show a loss of mortility (the number of sperm that are active or moving) after defreezing, Tseng said that he had to employ intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) technology to more precisely fertilize Mrs. Chen's eggs.

Thanks to progress in cryogenics and artificial reproductive technologies, Tseng said those suffering from serious illnesses and facing treatments that may make them infertile or those suffering from sperm anomalies can have their sperm cryopreserved for future procreation.