Fertility clinics prescribing risky add-ons

LONDON: Desperate couples sold extra treatments by fertility clinics are risking miscarriage, premature birth and kidney failure, a report warns.

Couples are often convinced by private doctors to pay for “add-ons” such as medication to “activate” their eggs, glue to “stick” embryos to the womb or egg-yolk drips to suppress the immune system. But some of these add-ons – which cost up to £3 500 (R60 000) – can harm a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant.

They are also putting their health at risk, potentially damaging their kidneys and causing septicaemia, according to a report on the top-up procedures by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority.

The chairperson of the fertility regulator, whose committee produced the draft report, is now questioning whether private clinics should be allowed to charge for such add-on treatments.

Sally Cheshire claimed it was not “the right thing” to bill “desperate” people for procedures without any scientific evidence behind them.

The regulator warns of a risk of miscarriage from “artificial egg activation” in which a woman’s egg is stimulated with chemicals to mimic the trigger for embryo development when it meets sperm.

Assisted hatching, in which clinics use acid and lasers to help the embryo “hatch” from a thick layer of proteins, risks damaging it. So does pre-implantation screening, used to check for abnormalities.

Damage to an embryo can end a pregnancy because it then fails to develop properly, preventing it becoming a baby in the womb.

Worryingly, the fertility authority warns that this screening can show up non-existent problems. The committee also warns that a process known as an endometrial “scratch” can give women harmful infections. The procedure involves scratching the lining of the womb to give an embryo a furrow it can nestle in.

The regulator also dismissed immunology treatment to stop a woman’s body rejecting her child because it is genetically different.

The complete lack of convincing evidence that it works comes with “serious” risks such as kidney failure, blood clots, septicaemia and premature birth from three kinds of drugs offered by clinics.

Cheshire called for more clinical trials, adding: “If you are asking a patient to pay for a treatment that is not proven when they are absolutely desperate, then I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”

The report follows an exposé by the BBC’s Panorama last year in which academics concluded 26 out of 27 treatments were of no benefit. The industry’s defence is that some procedures probably do work, but that trials cannot get funding to test them properly.

Professor Adam Balen said: “We should be focusing on making sure patients are fully informed about the treatments that clinics are offering.” – Daily Mail