WebMD Medical News Laura J. Martin, MD Nov. 2, 2010 --
Infertility has been ruled out as a potential cause of cerebral
palsy among children conceived by in vitro fertilization (IVF)
or by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), according to a
study. Researchers led by Jin Liang Zhu, PhD, an epidemiologist
at the Danish Epidemiology Science Center at the University of
Aarhus in Denmark, examined the association between the risk of
cerebral palsy in children and the time it takes a couple to
conceive. Although it’s been known that there is an elevated
risk of cerebral palsy among children conceived by in vitro
fertilization or by intracytoplasmic sperm injection,
researchers did not know whether the causes were related to the
fertility treatments themselves, the fact that many fertility
treatments result in multiple births, or the couple’s underlying
infertility that led them to use fertility treatments.
Researchers using data from the National Danish Birth Cohort
looked at more than 90,000 children born betwe