Couples struggling with infertility issues can spend thousands of dollars seeking a scientific answer, which often increases the stress of the situation, making a successful pregnancy even harder to achieve.
Friends of mine spent about a year and a half trying to conceive through in vitro fertilisation. The process took their savings and imposed restrictions on their diets and daily lives, as they carefully anticipated the "fertile days" each month. The hormonal roller coaster ride her system had to endure became a major factor in abandoning the process. It put a terrible strain on their relationship. It was even difficult for family and friends, such as myself, who always wanted to be supportive, but dreaded seeing the body language between them.
Infertility can be related to both sexes. In 60% of cases infertility is female related, but 40% of the time, it's caused by male complications. It was also determined that in 25% of these couples, both partners have fertility issues.
But now, Japanese scientists believe they have made a huge breakthrough on how to treat infertility in men. For the first time, sperm has been grown from scratch in a laboratory. It took about ten weeks to grow the sperm from mice stem cells.
The artificial sperm was then implanted into the testes of an infertile male mouse, which was then later extracted and used to fertilize mouse eggs in a laboratory dish. A mouse foster mother was then artificially inseminated with two sets of embryos, which apparently produced healthy mice. These mice then went on to reproduce under normal conditions.
This breakthrough in stem cell research could have all kinds of positive repercussions in the advancement of regenerative medicine. Stem cells are the body's master code, they are the source of all cells and tissues. They grow into all different types of cells and multiply. The scientists who study them are hopeful they will be pivotal in the treatment of diseases such as cancer.
The most encouraging part, is that this new discovery made by the Japanese scientists, can be studied immediately to determine if it can shed light on, or even correct male infertility issues. Especially in cases where men can't produce sperm at all.
Will artificial sperm be used to solve human infertility? It's a possibility that is still years, perhaps decades away from being applied to humans. And, it is sure to start another wave of controversy regarding legal and ethical dilemmas.
K M Fox is a writer and product reviewer. She can be reached at kmfox206@gmail.com
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