Abstract
The majority of offspring born following assisted reproductive technology (ART) achieve
equivalent development milestones and demonstrate comparable health as spontaneously
conceived children. Yet, multiple studies have suggested offspring conceived with
ART have slightly increased risk of metabolic derangements, cardiovascular disease,
and malignancy. However, the associations observed in these studies often inadequately
control for a variety of confounding variables, such as multiple gestation, premature
birth, and low birth weight. Furthermore, many studies fail to account for the increased
risk of many of these pathologies in the offspring of subfertile women in general.
Lastly, the absolute risk of most of the ailments studied is extremely low. In nearly
all examples, the number of women who would need to be treated to observe one additional
diagnosis is substantially high. When compared with the number of couples who would
have remained childless due to severe male factor infertility or would have been exposed
to the risk of passing on a severe monogenic disorder, the general increased risks
to ART-exposed children is very small.
Keywords
assisted reproductive technologies - embryo culture - IVF offspring - multiple gestations
- single embryo transfer
