SPERM WASHING

Sperm Washing – The safe conceiving option for HIV discordant couple

HIV has been considered a chronic disease for the couple who dream of building their own family with their biological baby. Everyday hundreds of baby are born with HIV positive around the world. However, The dream of having their own biological child should not be discriminated but to reduce the risk of HIV transmission, emphasizing on the HIV discordant couple which consists of HIV-infected male and HIV-uninfected female, the safest way to conceive is sperm washing in combination with In vitro fertilization. 

Why choose sperm washing

Biological Child – The safest option for HIV-discordant couple in which the man is HIV-infected and the woman is HIV-uninfected, is insemination with sperm from an HIV-negative donor but the baby is not their biological child. For the HIV-discordant couple who dream of their own biological child, the condomless sexual intercourse is too risky for transmission of HIV from an HIV-infected man to an HIV-uninfected woman. To have biological child, the HIV transmission can be approached by the risk-reducing strategy. The most appropriate risk-reducing strategy is sperm washing while the HIV-infected man is using highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART)*. By this method, avoidance of HIV transmission can be optimized, and the HIV-uninfected woman can conceive her husband’s biological child safely and have a HIV-negative child.

Safe and Trustworthy – The condomless sexual intercourse is considered the high risk of HIV transmission from HIV infected man to uninfected woman. It is still a huge concern, even the couple try to optimize the risk-reducing by taking the drugs for virological suppression. By sperm washing, we remove the HIV virus and recheck by PCR technique. From the recent data, there are 1.3-7.7% of washed sperm which is positive even after sperm washing would be discarded, do not need to take any risk of infection by using those infected sperm.

Assisted conception such as IVF or IUI using sperm washing is such a costly treatment but worth trying because the research confirms the safety and trustworthy with the great success in preventing the HIV transmission from husband to wife and father to his child. Assisted conception using sperm washing technique on semen of HIV-infected male partners have been reported with ZERO HIV-transmission to female and baby. In addition, sperm washing in the man who are under highly active antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) in conjunction with the woman on PreExposure Prophylaxis (PrEP)* helps reduce the risk of HIV transmission even more.

 Sperm washing workflow

Sperm washing is the technique that the sperm is separated from the semen and purified in the solution to clean the unwanted HIV virus. Before using this sperm for in vitro fertilization (IVF), the absence of HIV virus must be confirmed by using PCR technique

Sperm washing is a hope for HIV discordant to have their biological baby with lowest risk of HIV-transmission. With the evidence of no HIV transmission in thousands of assisted conception cycle with sperm washing, this could help to reduce the spread of HIV significantly. For any further information,please contact us