Does assisted reproductive treatment increase the risk of birth defects in the offspring?

摘要

In a recent paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine based on an Australian cohort of 6163 in vitro fer-tilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF/ICSI) children (1407 after ICSI), Davies et al. (1) conclude that "the risk of birth defects associated with ICSI remained increased after multivariate adjustment, although the possibility of residual confounding cannot be excluded". This has raised a lot of media attention and concerns among couples treated or pregnant after IVF treatment.