Methods used in treatment of infertility, Assisted reproductive technology, ART

 

• According to WHO Infertility is a disease of the male or female reproductive system.

• It is defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after twelve months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.

• Infertility is a disorder in which couples are not able to produce their offspring despite unprotected sexual intercourse due to irregularity of their reproductive structures.

• Many Physical, immunological  and Psychological , Congenital disease and Drugs are reason of Infertility.

Types of infertility

• There are two types of infertility.

Primary infertility

• It refers to couples who are not capable to produce their offspring or can not attain pregnancy at least one year  despite of  sex without using birth control methods.

Secondary infertility

• It refers to couples who were  capable of attaining the pregnancy at least once, but now are unable.

• To treat or Diagnose the infertility, several techniques are used. These techniques are termed as Assisted reproductive technologies(ART).

• These ARTs are as follows- 

In vitro fertilization -

• This is called offsite fertilization followed by the embryo transfer.
• This is one of the popular Assisted reproductive technologies and called Test tube babies.

• In this method, fertilisation between egg and sperm takes place offsite like a laboratory in a test tube.

• An artificial condition is made for fertilizatiom in artificial nutrients or medium.

• An egg and sperm is collected from females and male respectively and allowed for fertilization in an artificial medium in the test tube.

• Once fertilization takes place outside the body and zygote is formed.

• Afterwards, cleavage in zygote  is also done in artificial medium condition. As a result zygote is changed into an with a blastomere.

Embryo transfer-

• When zygote attain the stage  upto eight blastomere, now it transferred into fallopian tube of female further development.

• This is known as Zygote intra fallopian transfer, ZIFT.

• When zygote attains the stage of more than eight blastomeres, it is directly transferred into the uterus for the completion of gestation periods.

• This is called intra uterine transfer, IUT. This method can be done in vivo and in vitro condition.

• This method is used when there is an obstacle in fertilization in the fallopian tube of a female.

Gamete intra fallopian transfer, GIFT-

• This method is used when a female is not capable of producing the egg during ovulation.

• In such cases, an egg is collected from Female donor and transferred into the fallopian tube of the affected female for fertilization.

Intra ctyoplasmic sperm injection, ICSI-

• It is technique in which the sperm is directly injected into the cytoplasm of the ovum to form a zygote in laboratory condition or in vitro . Now embryo transfer takes place.

Intrauterine insemination IUI-

• This method is used when male partner is not able to inseminate his semen into the female genital tract or male has problems with low sperm count.

• In such cases, The semen from the husband or healthy donor male is collected and introduced into the uterus for fertilization and further development.