Eight million ART babies and counting

Almost 40 years after the birth of the world's first IVF baby, Louise Brown, more than 8 million babies have been born as a result of IVF and other assisted reproduction treatments. 

Dr David Adamson, director of Fertility Physicians of Northern California and the Fertility and Reproductive Health Institute, presented this data on behalf of the International Committee for Monitoring ART (ICMART) at the European Society for Human Embryology and Reproduction (ESHRE) in Barcelona. 

This estimate was reached using data collected from regional registries from 1991 to 2014. It is thought that more than half a million babies are born each year from IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), with more than 2 million treatment cycles performed. In a previous study in 2013, Dr Adamson estimated that there had been 5 million births born from IVF up to that time (see BioNews 727). 

Dr Christian De Geyter, also speaking at the ESHRE conference, said that in Europe, Spain is top of the league carrying out the most assisted reproduction treatments, followed by Russia and then Germany. 

The ESHRE consortium provides the largest European data set as it includes approximately 80 percent of all  treatments in 2015. It does not, however, yet include UK data for that year. 

The report also shows that ICSI continues to be used in favour of IVF – double the amount of ICSI was used, indicating that it is now used widely for fertilisation in non-male-factor cases. The rate of twin pregnancy has declined in Europe to 14 percent in 2015 and the rate of single embryo transfer has risen to 38 percent, the study finds.