Cnn
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The sperm of a man with a rare genetic mutation linked to cancer has been used to conceive dozens of children across Europe, which has aroused calls for greater regulations and a limit of the number of births authorized by a single donor.
The sperm of the donor was used to design at least 67 children from 46 families born between 2008 and 2015, said Edwige Kasper, biologist at the Rouen University Hospital in France, during a presentation at the annual conference of the European Human Genetics Society in Milan on Saturday. Ten of the children have already received a cancer diagnosis.
“At the heart of the problem, it seems that it is the regulation, or perhaps the lack of regulation, of the number of births by a single donor,” she said.
The analysis has shown that the donor, who is himself in good health, had a rare mutation in a gene named TP53, which is likely to cause LI-Fraomeni syndrome, a rare disorder that increases a person’s risk to develop cancer.
The transfer was not known when the donation was made, but the children born of this donor have since been identified in eight different European countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, said Kasper in his presentation.
Ten of them were diagnosed with cancers such as brain tumors and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and 13 other children carry the gene but have not yet developed cancer.
They will require regular medical examinations because of their increased risk of developing cancer and has 50% of them to transmit it to their own children, said Kasper.
“The follow -up protocol involves MRI heels of the whole body, MRI of the brain and, for adults, breast, ultrasound examination of the abdomen and a clinical examination by a specialist. It’s heavy and stressful for carriers, but we have seen his effectiveness in the way he made early detection of tumors and therefore the chances of survival of patients, “said patients,” Kasper said in a press article.
Unlike some cases of series sperm donors, such as a Dutch man who was ordered to stop giving sperm After being found generated between 500 and 600 children around the world, this man donated only one private semen bank in Denmark named the European sperm bank.
Julie Paulli Budtz, vice-president of corporate communications at the European Sperm Bank, told CNN that it was “deeply affected by this case”.
“The donor was carefully tested even above the required standards, but preventive genetic screening reaches its limits here,” she said in a statement sent to CNN on Monday.
“Each human being has around 20,000 genes, and it is scientifically not possible to detect pathogenic mutations in the genetic pool of a person if you do not know what you are looking for.”
There is currently no limit to the number of children who are allowed to be born using a single donor, which Budtz said that the European Sperm Bank would like to change.
“This is also why, in addition to following the national pregnancy limits, we have proactively implemented our own international limit of 75 families per donor,” she said.
This limit is self-imposed because the regulations vary from country to country. For example, France has a limit of 10 births per donor, while Denmark authorizes 12 and Germany authorized up to 15, according to the press release.
“There is a major problem here concerning a lack of harmonized regulation across Europe,” Kasper said in the press release. “We need appropriate regulations at European level to try to prevent it from happening and implement measures to guarantee a global limit on the number of progenies designed by the same donor.”
