IVF May Slightly Increase Mental Retardation Risk
While new research finds no significant link between autism and singleton children conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF), a slightly increased risk of mental retardation, or intellectual disability, was found following IVF treatment including intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
ICSI involves the injection of a single sperm into an egg to fertilize it. Researchers found when ICSI was used to overcome male infertility, the risk for intellectual disability increased slightly compared to IVF without ICSI.
"The reasons (for an increased risk) could be the underlying infertility, says Abraham Reichenberg, one of the study authors and a professor at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York and King's College London.
It could be something happening in the many steps that are involved in each of the treatments, or something that's happening later in the pregnancies, or all of them combined together. It could be any one of those steps. In any one of them it could go wrong."
Read more at CNN.com