New screening for fertility donors
Updated on 09 January 2009
New guidelines were published to screen sperm, egg and embryo donors for disease.
The guide includes new rules to cut down the risk of passing on the human form of mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
Although there are no current tests to predict if people are at risk of developing CJD, donors should not be accepted if either they or a close family member has been diagnosed with a prion-related disease such as CJD. The new guidelines update ones published by the British Andrology Society in 1999 and by the British Fertility Society in 2000.
Anyone who has undergone invasive neurosurgery or received human pituitary-derived growth hormone should also not be accepted as a donor.
Those who have had a tissue transplant from the human eye or nervous system will also be rejected to cut down down the risk of passing on CJD.
The guide is intended to update medical professionals with the latest techniques in one single document.
Screening rules related to diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, gonorrhoea and chlamydia remain the same. So do those for screening for genetic diseases. Recommended upper age limits for donors also remain the same - 35 for women and 40 for men.
Dr Allan Pacey, chair of the working party that developed the guidelines, said: "The donation of sperm, eggs and embryos is a key aspect of assisted reproduction and many couples rely on donors to create a family.
"These guidelines aim to reinforce the safety of donation both for the recipient and for donor-conceived people. The UK professional bodies have worked together to revise these guidelines and promote good clinical practice, providing patients with safe and effective treatment and helping them have healthy children."
The guidelines were produced by a group comprising representatives from the Association of Biomedical Andrologists, Association of Clinical Embryologists, British Andrology Society, British Fertility Society and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
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