Professor Charles Rodeck, Britain’s leading foetal medicine expert and founder and head of the unit for foetal medicine at University College Hospital London, recently appeared public to say that he has deep concerns over some of the IVF drugs and tests being offered to infertile couples.

Private clinics are exploiting women desperate to get pregnant by offering them unproven and expensive treatments, Rodeck said.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Rodeck transformed the use of foetal medicine in Britain by initiating the use of ultrasound for foetal therapy and diagnosis of malformations in the late Seventies. He went on to set up the first foetal medicine unit in the early Eighties, as well as setting up clinics specialising in the care of young women.

‘Even though I have no evidence that the mothers or babies are being harmed by the extra hormones and steroids they are increasingly being given by these clinics, you can’t be sure what happens to a baby when you put unnecessary and unproven medicines into its mother’s body,’ he said.

His work has left him open to attacks from the anti-abortion lobby but he is defiant. ‘The truth is that not all human life is totally sacrosanct,’ he said. ‘Nature has a mechanism called “miscarriage” which eliminates many of its early errors but it is not always totally efficient and so some of these errors survive. What we are trying to do simply use technology to assist Nature.’

Rodeck agreed with the concerns voiced earlier this year by Lord Winston, professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, that the IVF industry has been left corrupted by money.

Tags:  foetal medicine, IVF, IVF drugs, Steroids

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Many of the 3,000 unexplained miscarriages that happen every year can be prevented with steroid treatments, as per a research presented at the British Association conference.

Dr. Siobhan Quenby, of the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said that the medical tests of 120 women had brought the fact that natural killer cells are the biggest cause of concern in respect to miscarriages and failed IVF embryo implants.

It was noted during the research that three quarters of 40 women treated with steroids gave successful births despite the fact that they had a past history of multiple miscarriages.

From News-Medical.Net:

Dr. Siobhan Quenby, of the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, says that tests involving 120 women had identified natural killer cells as a cause of miscarriages and failed IVF embryo implants.

While such natural but potentially deadly cells are beneficial in most of the body because they can destroy infected or malignant cells, in the uterus they have been found to promote rapid growth of blood vessels when present in high numbers.

These blood vessels then transport additional oxygen-bearing blood which can cause miscarriages or prevent embryos implanting.

Steroids prescribed to 40 women, who had suffered multiple miscarriages, resulted in three quarters of them successfully giving birth.

The steroid treatment has been shown to reduce the level of natural killer cells in the uterus, and this is thought to increase the chances of an embryo going to full term.

Dr. Quenby says currently there is no treatment for the thousands of women around the world who are desperate because they keep miscarrying for no reason.

Dr. Quenby also said that there is an urgent need to include steroids in treatment for women with a history of miscarriages and believe that a third of miscarriages can be prevented with a steroid treatment.

Tags:  IVF, IVF embryo implants, miscarriages, steroid treatment, Steroids

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