The age of the father weighs on assisted reproduction

A French study reveals that couples using artificial insemination are three times more likely to experience a miscarriage when the father is over 40 years old.

Yves Montand experienced the joy of being a father at the age of 67. Charlie Chaplin had his tenth child at over 70. As for Anthony Quinn, he is the champion in all categories since he was 81 years apart from his youngest. Does ordinary people have an interest in following the example of these stars? Not so sure if we are to believe the French study presented on July 7 in Barcelona, during the congress of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).
Dr Stéphanie Belloc from the Eylau medically assisted procreation center in Paris, studied 21,239 artificial intra-marital inseminations carried out in 12,236 couples between January 2002 and December 2006. “We observed each parameter related to sperm,” explains the Dr Paul Cohen-Bacrie, director of the laboratory. And finally, it is the age factor that has the strongest impact. We did not expect such results ”.
Concretely, the miscarriage rate reaches 35% when the father is over 40 years old while it is around 10 to 15% when he is under 30 years old. The impact on the pregnancy rate, although lower, is also real. Before age 40, the rate of artificial inseminations leading to pregnancy is 13.4%. It drops to 10.9% when the man is four years older. We must alert the couples.

This study is not the first of its kind. “Moreover, the Cecos (1) do not recruit sperm donors beyond 45 years”, indicates Dr Françoise Merlet, referent for AMP activities at the Biomedicine Agency. It prevents. “This subject remains taboo and the message does not get through to the public,” says Dr. Joëlle Belaisch-Allart, vice-president of the French Society of Gynecology.
This large-scale study therefore has the merit of driving the point home. And Dr. Cohen-Bacrie, co-author of the study, hopes that “the gynecologists will take it up, change their speech a little and not alert couples to the age of the woman. The Eylau laboratory team also believes that these figures will encourage further exploratory examinations to choose the right AMP technique. “We believe that the use of IVF or Icsi should even be suggested to infertile couples where either member is over 40 years old,” says Dr Belloc.

This work also brings to the fore the issue of a possible age limit for men in accessing ART techniques. The new rules of good practice on medically assisted procreation published last May had given up such a chopper because “we had not succeeded in finding a consensus on the age limit”, relates Dr Merlet. “In fact, we have had hostility from a number of male gynecologists,” reveals Dr. Belaisch-Allart. On the other hand, there were a few women who wanted these rules of good practice to reflect the age of men. Notably because the law just stipulates that you have to be of childbearing age, which doesn’t mean anything. The publication of a study showing that the biological clock is also ticking for men makes more than one woman smile. A certain rebalancing of responsibilities in fertility problems is not to displease them.
(1) Center for the study and conservation of eggs and sperm.

Questions to Dr Joëlle Belaisch-Allart, vice-president of the French Society of Gynecology

Set an age limit for men in the GPA

Are you surprised by the results of this French study?
Dr Joëlle Belaisch-Allart. Not really. Several studies have already demonstrated the effects of a man’s age on the chances of pregnancy, as well as on the risk of malformation. But, until now, studies had shown that these effects were felt around 45 years old. However, the large French study conducted by the center for medical aid to procreation of Eylau tends to prove that the bar would rather be around 35 years.

Why is this risk still poorly understood?
Dr J. BA. It was a taboo subject. Until now, we only talked about the age of the woman. And I wasn’t very successful when I talked about the impact of the father’s age on the chances of pregnancy. I am therefore delighted that this major French study sheds light on this problem. But be careful, my reaction has nothing to do with primitive feminism.

Are you going to provide information to men?
Dr J. BA. Already, in Sèvres, we want men over 55 who are engaged in an in vitro fertilization process to meet a psychologist. Because it doesn’t make perfect sense to conceive a child at this age. If the pregnancy proceeds naturally, the medical profession has nothing to say, but with IVF it is different. I am against pregnancy for women at 60, and I am also against conceiving a child at that age for men. It is also for these reasons – physiological and psychological – that I would have liked to have mentioned an age limit for men in the guide to good clinical and biological practices in ART. But, that was not retained.

Interview with CC