The USB Ovulation Detector

Finding out when you're ovulating may be a lot easier thanks to this upcoming DuoFertility device. Designed by Cambridge Temperature Concepts, a spin-off by Cambridge University PhD students, it consists of a small stick-on patch device that goes under your arm, and a handheld reader.

The patch is a small rubberized gizmo (with a new efficient battery that lasts eight months) and it sticks to your skin and measures your basal body temperature way more accurately than other systems: this temperature rises minutely during ovulation.

When the wireless reader unit gets the info on your temperature change, it then lets you know the best time to try out some baby-making with symbols on its display, or a readout on your PC— it's got a USB connection. Easy peasy, and no pee samples or early wake-ups for manual temp measurements that similar devices require. Human trials are scheduled for next month, and the device may be on sale as soon as the Fall.

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Babies with three parents

Designer babies with three parents could be born within three years. The controversial technique screens an embryo created by a man and a woman for incurable genetic diseases. Defective DNA is replaced with that from another woman, effectively giving the baby two mothers and a father.

Scientists at Newcastle University in the UK have already created embryos using the method and are perfecting it for use in IVF clinics.They say it could free children from diseases including some forms of diabetes, blindness and heart problems. Critics say it could lead to genetically-modified babies being designed to order. UK law says embryos created using the technique must be destroyed, but scientists hope this can be overturned.

The research focuses on mitochondria "batteries" inside cells, which turn food into energy. Each mitochondrion has its own DNA, which is passed from mother to child. Defects in this DNA affect more than one in 5000 babies and cause around 50 genetic diseases, some of which kill before adulthood. The researchers have managed to swap the damaged DNA with healthy genetic material.

The first step is fertilisation of an egg through IVF. The embryo is screened for defects. When it is a few hours old, the nucleus containing genetic information from the parents is removed and put into another woman's healthy egg. Mitochondria are outside the nucleus so the baby is free of defects and will look like its "real" parents.

US biologist Professor Jonathan Van Blerkom says it would be "criminal" not to allow the technique to be used. There are fears that the influence of mitochondria on areas including longevity, IQ and fertility could lead to GM babies being made to order.

New Method to Diagnose Blockage that Causes Male Infertility

Almost as common as diabetes, male infertility affects 15% of reproductive age men in India. Many cases of infertility are caused by blockages within the male sex organs that result in low sperm counts or no sperm counts. These blockages are often reversible and therefore important to diagnose as couples may be able to conceive naturally afterward. To date, one such type of blockage, termed ejaculatory duct obstruction, has been difficult to diagnose as a cause of infertility. Last month, Dr. Paul Turek, a Professor Emeritus in Urology at UCSF, published a paper in The Journal of Urology that dramatically simplifies this diagnosis. "All prior tests for this diagnosis involve simply looking at the system and trying to guess how it works, but this new test actually 'pokes' at the system and watches how it responds," says Dr. Turek, a nationally recognized microsurgeon and male infertility specialist.

"We simply applied the same principles that have been used to assess urination issues in urology for the past 30 years, termed urodynamics, to the male sex organs, and call it 'vasodynamics.'"

For the study, 2 groups of men were compared: normal fertile men and infertile men suspected of having ejaculatory duct obstruction. In addition to taking ultrasound pictures of the reproductive tract system in both groups, which is the current standard diagnostic test, he did something else. By injecting harmless, colored dye into the system through a fine needle and measuring the pressure and flow characteristics of the dye as it progressed through the ejaculatory ducts, he found large differences between the fertile and infertile groups of men.

In fertile men, it took 33 cm of water pressure to cause flow in the ejaculatory ducts, whereas in the infertile men with suspected obstruction, it took 4 times that pressure or 116 cm water pressure. "With this hydraulic technique, we can actually measure the degree of blockage in the male sex organs, which has never been done before," says Dr. Turek of the new technique. Not only that, after surgery was performed to relieve the obstruction in the blocked men, the injection procedure was repeated and the water pressures fell into the range of the normal fertile men. This response also corresponded well with improvements in semen quality after the treatment.

"For several decades, the diagnosis of ejaculatory duct obstruction has involved a lot of guesswork. Vasodynamics now removes the guessing and replaces it with real information that can be used to reliably improve male fertility potential," says Dr. Turek.

Children of older fathers' more likely to die early

A new study has shown that becoming a father after the age of 45 increases the likelihood that the resulting child will die before reaching adulthood. The researchers, based at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, who published their findings in the European Journal of Epidemiology, say that the reason for this is the decline in the quality of sperm as men age.
The research shows that children born from older fathers are more likely to suffer from a number of birth defects and conditions such as autism, schizophrenia or epilepsy. The majority of deaths were found to be caused by congenital defects that increased the risk of infant mortality, such as heart problems.
Children born to men aged 45 and above were found to be up to 88 per cent more likely to die before adulthood than those born to men aged between 25 and 29, the researchers found. The researchers looked at 100,000 children born between 1980 and 1996 using data taken from the Danish Fertility Database, and found that 831 of these had died before reaching the age of 13 - 601 of these died in their first year. Similar results were found for men who fathered children while still in their teens, but could perhaps be explained by their mothers also being young and often therefore disadvantaged, say the researchers.
Jin Liang Zhu, from the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre, and lead researcher in the study, said that 'the risks of older fatherhood can be very profound, and it is not something that people are always aware of'. People tend to be far more aware of the risks associated with older mothers, such as the increased prevalence of Down Syndrome, although it has also previously been shown that this may be affected by the father's age as well.
Speaking to the Melbourne Herald Sun, Professor Les Sheffield, a clinical geneticist from Melbourne's Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, explained that genetic errors in sperm increase by half a per cent when a man reaches 40, by 2 per cent when he is 50, by 5 per cent when he is 60 and by 20 per cent by the time he is 80. He added that on the basis of this, 'men around 40 ought to be thinking about the increased risk to their children, the same as women do'.