Serodiscordant couple is when one partner is living with HIV and the other is not. So how does such a couple have a baby? The answer, fertility treatments. With the help of these fertility treatments the risk of the woman getting infected with HIV is greatly reduced, thereby decreasing the risk of vertical transmission (transmission from mother to child) as well.
There are two popular fertility treatments. One is the donor sperm option wherein in order to conceive, the HIV negative woman will use a donor sperm, which is similar to the process she may have undergone had her husband been infertile.
Sperm washing is a popular method being used by couples, who want their partners be the biological parent. According to this theory, the HIV infected material is carried mainly in the seminal fluid, which is ejaculated, rather than in the sperm. The man’s ejaculate is collected and washed in the laboratory in order to remove the infectious seminal fluid. After that it is stored until the time the woman starts ovulating and it can transferred into her womb by intra-uterine insemination (or if either partner has fertility problems, perhaps IVF or ICSI).
One study conducted in 2005 in Italy showed encouraging results. Of the 567 serodiscordant couples treated with sperm washing, 298 resulted in pregnancies (26.2% with artificial insemination and 37.2% with conventional in vitro fertilisation or with intracytoplasmic sperm injection) and 224 children were born. The study showed that semen washing in HIV-positive men in the study had not produced any horizontal (in woman) or vertical (to the child) HIV seroconversion. However, there is no 100% guarantee that the virus will be eliminated in the motile sperm.
Source : http://goo.gl/CnzzFc
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