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According to a study published in the European Heart Journal (EHJ), children conceived by artificial procreation have a higher risk of congenital heart defects than those born of natural conception.
The study was based on data from artificial procreation registries in four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) between 1984 and 2015. It covered all live-born children, over 7.7 million in total. Of these, 171,735 were born using artificial reproduction. The study shows that heart defects were around 36% more frequent in these babies than in those conceived naturally (absolute risk 1.84% vs. 1.15%). This risk is similar whatever the type of assisted reproduction (in vitro fertilization alone or with intracytoplasmic sperm injection ICSI; fresh or frozen embryos). However, the study points out that this risk is higher for multiple births than for single births after artificial procreation (2.47% vs. 1.62%). The authors therefore recommend the transfer of a single embryo per artificial procreation attempt.
Does circumventing infertility really solve the problem?
Professor Ulla-Britt Wennerholm (University of Gothenburg), who led the study, said in a European Society of Cardiology press release: “The fact that the risk of heart defects is similar regardless of the type of assisted reproduction used may indicate that there is a common factor underlying infertility in the parents and congenital heart disease in their babies”.
This finding raises questions about the true benefit-risk ratio of this technique. Is artificial procreation a satisfactory solution to infertility, both medically and ethically? By circumventing the problem of infertility without resolving its underlying causes, artificial procreation passes on to the next generation pathologies and genetic weaknesses that were undoubtedly at the root of the infertility. While the majority of children born using this technique are unaffected, the ever-increasing use of artificial procreation could lead to an increase in related pathologies in the future. By way of illustration, in 2013 in Belgium, 33,704 IVF cycles were undertaken; for the year 2021, 42,497 were undertaken, leading to 6,193 births, or 5.25% of total births.
The above-mentioned study recommends that couples undergoing artificial procreation be informed of the risks involved.