First British women to have £1,000 ‘no-frills’ IVF
A ‘NO-FRILLS’ IVF treatment costing under £1,000 should be available to British women within weeks. The budget procedure, which was developed last year, economises on expensive drugs and incubators. Instead, it uses a cheap test-tube set and a chemical reaction inspired by Alka-Seltzer hangover tablets.
Despite its low-tech approach, a pilot study showed the treatment to be at least as effective as the conventional equivalent, which costs up to £15,000.
Dr Geeta Nargund of the Walking
‘There’s nothing magical’
Egg foundation, who is bringing the procedure to Britain, believes it will allow the NHS to pay for more IVF treatments.
Thousands of women are denied IVF each year because health trusts cannot afford the cost.
The cheap new technique has been tested in Belgium, where a third of the women involved became pregnant, resulting in 16 births.
Dr Nargund’s London clinic, Create, will now treat 50 women aged 37 or younger, comparing their progress with 50 given normal IVF. If the study is a success, the technique could be generally available by later this year.
Although the no-frills women will be charged under £1,000, and Dr Nargund insists this will be the cost of the procedure, other doctors have warned that the final commercial price may be higher.
The huge savings are possible because the new treatment does without an array of expensive equipment.
An embryo must be grown in a nutrient mixture that is neither too acidic nor too alkaline. This is achieved by pumping expensive, medical-grade carbon dioxide into an incubator, which itself must be in a room kept sterile with purified air.
But Professor Jonathan Van Blerkom of the University of Colorado showed it was possible to provide the gas by dissolving an Alka-Seltzer tablet in water. He then moved on to using baking soda mixed with citric acid.
Rather than an incubator, he used two rubber- stoppered test- tubes costing 7p and connected by a plastic tube. The gas is made in the first and travels up the tube to the second.
The eggs and sperm are injected into the second tube, where, if all goes well, at least one egg is fertilised.
The stoppers keep everything airtight, removing the need for purified air, and the embryos grow inside the tube. After three to five days, they are ready for transfer to the womb.
Professor Van Blerkom said: ‘ The embryos don’t know if they are living in an expensive incubator and a lab with purified air or in a little tube. They don’t care. There’s nothing magical.’