Women who have multiple births following IVF treatment are more likely to be depressed than single-birth mothers, according to a new US study presented at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) last week. Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston interviewed 300 mothers who had a multiple birth (twins...
Adult bone marrow stem cells fuse with existing cells to grow new tissues, rather than transforming into other types of cell, two new studies suggest. Researchers at Stanford University have shown that transplanted bone marrow cells fuse with specialised brain cells involved in controlling movement and balance. A second study...
After seven years of negotiation, US Senators have voted 95-0 in favour of new laws that will prevent employers and insurers from using personal genetic information. The bill will now go to the House of Representatives, where supporters of a similar proposal say they have the backing of 221...
US and European scientists have published results confirming that a gene therapy technique triggered leukaemia in two boys taking part in a trial at the Necker hospital, Paris. Their findings, which appear in Science, show that the virus used to deliver the therapeutic gene activated a cancer-causing gene. Eleven boys...
Claims by maverick fertility doctor Panayiotis Zavos, who says he will soon offer a baby-cloning service to childless couples, have provoked disbelief and annoyance from other scientists. Zavos, who said a month ago that he has a cloned human embryo ready for implantation, is reported to be offering to clone...
Researchers from Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China have succeeded in creating a pregnancy using an embryo containing the genetic material of three different people. An egg cell taken from one woman was fertilised by in vitro fertilisation (IVF), creating a one-cell embryo, or zygote. The nucleus of the zygote...
Three new studies presented at the annual conference of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) last week suggest that body weight, caffeine and cannabis can all affect a man's sperm. Caffeine 'perks up' sperm, by making it swim faster, while cannabis, despite its initial effect being similar to that...
Scientists in the United States claim that they have established a link between the use of frozen embryos during in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment and ectopic pregnancies. They say that ectopic pregnancies - where the embryo implants in the wall of the Fallopian tube, rather than the lining of the uterus...
Join our list to stay up-to-date on all the latest developments in the fields of human fertility and genomics.
Comment
Reporters should put new research in context
by Juliet Tizzard
Just like the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) annual meeting this summer, last week's American equivalent, held in San Antonio, Texas, attracted a rash of media coverage. There is something about three or four days of intense science in a pleasant location with a press room that...