Aurora magazine

More sperm donors are being sought in China. The reason? Pollution and stress have lowered China's reproductive potential by 80%. That is why Chinese couples are turning to masses at fertility clinics.

In 2015, the Chinese government abandoned the single child policy, thus increasing the workforce of the country. Many couples however had to deal with fertility problems that were neglected first. The increase in pollution and stress has in fact reduced the fertility of Chinese men. It is estimated that in the 1970s a Chinese man had averaged 100 million sperm per milliliter of sperm. Today, there are only 20 million.

Reducing male reproductive abilities has led to mass exodus to fertility clinics. In 2016, the Chinese market for in vitro fertilization was worth 670 million dollars. In 2022 it should reach 1.5 billion. The biggest beneficiaries will be foreign companies, as only 18% of Chinese men are able to donate their sperm. It is therefore inevitable to turn to Australian and Californian companies to meet growing demand.

It is difficult for foreign companies to obtain the permits needed to operate in China. This has resulted in an increase in medical tourism aimed at assisted procreation. Several travel agencies in China collaborate with Australian companies or located in Singapore so that they can fulfill their parenting dream.

Source: wired.it

Nemaline myopathy is a rare neuromuscular disease that occurs at birth, in infancy or even in adulthood. It is characterized by widespread muscular weakness, is not progressive and has varying degrees of severity.

The most serious forms of the disease manifest themselves in the neonatal phase. Infants struggle to feed and have respiratory and cardiac problems. Usually the disease leads to death within the first few months of life. The most common forms, however, appear in childhood, are moderate, non-progressive.

Children who suffer from myalactic myopathy have the muscles of the limbs, the trunk, and the face that are not toned. This causes muscle weakness, with difficulty in language and swallowing. Sometimes the anomalies affecting the facial muscles give a particular appearance to the face.
There is a rare form of disease that affects adulthood. It affects 4% of cases and is progressive, with varying severity from individual to individual. It causes respiratory weakness and limbs, but it has a strong clinical variability. Sometimes it also leads to joint pain.

Nemaline myopathy has genetic causes and can be both hereditary and sporadic. It affects several genes, all linked to the coding of muscle tissue proteins. Depending on the gene involved, the disease is transmitted with autosomal dominant or recessive mode. In the first case, a single sick parent has 50% of the chance to transmit the disease. In the second, parents are healthy carriers and have 25% of the chances of having a sick child.

The diagnosis of the disease occurs through clinical observation and muscle biopsy. In subjects with nonmaline myopathy, muscle fibers have rod shaped structures formed by protein assemblies. Given the variable nature of the disease, however, diagnosis can be very difficult. On the other hand, the discovery of some genes involved facilitated prenatal diagnosis.

For the time being, nonaligned myopathy does not care. If detected in time, you can prevent some of the effects and improve the patient's quality of life. They are also undergoing pharmacological therapies.

The greater or less presence of chromosomal abnormalities affects the success of the embryo implant in the IVF. The analysis is performed by the operators, which exposes it to a large number of variants. Professor José Celso Rocha therefore suggested introducing an automatic evaluation criterion.

According to the professor, one could start from the analysis of images of developing embryos to identify mathematical variables. This would allow you to process an algorithm that automatically classifies images to eliminate subjective variables. An automated process would improve the evaluation of the embryo and its development possibilities. This could offer targeted strategies to increase the plant's chances of success.

For the moment the process has been tested on animal models. The professor's team analyzed images of the development of 482 bovine embryos. The researchers inserted images into the artificial intelligence system to train and test their performance. The algorithm identified 36 variables in the judgment, of which 24 were inserted into the system architecture.

During the first set-up phase, the system showed a 76% accuracy rate. The team has shown that human evaluation has a lower accuracy rate than artificial intelligence. 76% also refers only to the first phase and can be improved as data increases.

The next step will be to develop a correspondent for the evaluation of human embryos. The algorithm could someday replace part of human donation in the IVF, ensuring mathematically better results. Stress, experience and fatigue are factors that have a heavy impact on the performance of human beings.

Source: eshre.eu

Pregnant women with a severe case of herpes behind transmit their antibodies to the baby. The body keeps virus protection active and transfers it to the nervous system of the fetus. This protects him against similar infections, which could have serious consequences on brain development.

The discovery comes from Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine. The researchers analyzed both human samples and animal models. Analyzes have revealed that antibodies against Type 1 Herpes Virus (HSV-1) are transmitted from mother to child. This prevents the baby from getting infected during delivery. The effects also extend to the first few months of life, protecting the neonatal nervous system.

The children of pregnant mothers have 50% of the chance of infecting the baby. Herpes transmission occurs during the part has consequences that go far beyond the plagues on the skin. In fact, herpes also causes eye infections and encephalitis. Perinatal infection often leads to brain damage, even very serious, if not even death.

Laboratory experiments have detected antibodies against HSV-1 well after extinction of the infection. The antibodies present in the nerve cell lines can cross the placenta and settle into the fetal ones. In this way the newborn is protected against the herpes virus and the like.
Attempts to process a herpes vaccine for adults have for now failed. However, these same vaccines could prevent transmission from mother to child.

However, further tests will be required.

Source: asm.org
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