Fertility clinics drive thriving black market in eggs

Young Chinese women are risking their fertility by selling off their eggs to unscrupulous fertiliy clinics, a CCTV program has claimed.

As part of an investigation into the "human egg black market" CCTV found that high school students and university students were selling their eggs to agents for a few thousand yuan. The clinics then offer these eggs to infertile women who pay 30,000- 100,000 yuan (US$5000-$15,000).

The report said young girls were picked because of their looks, education and health and had to endure a series of injections with fertility hormones to stimulate ovulation so their eggs could be harvested by clinics. The young women said they used the cash to pay off credit card debts, but most were unaware of the serious risks of the procedures, including infertility.

Commentators said the commercial transactions of human eggs were illegal and banned, but there was little enforcement of the rules in practice. They said illegal clinics and the doctors who worked in them made large amounts of money, offering infertile women the chance to select a donor egg based on looks, intelligence and other personal characteristics of the donor. Despite being illegal, the egg black market was a thriving market and barely concealed  with advertisements by agents common on the internet.

The report said the fertility agents and their networks also offered infertile women other services such as surrogate mothers, as part of packages that could cost as much as 400,000 yuan.The trade was very lucrative and many young women saw nothing ethically wrong with what they were doing, it said.
The commentators said there was a need for a widespread crackdown to enforce the regulations on artificial reproductive technology. There was also a need to better regulate reproductive clinics and promote legitimate egg donation rather than the commercial practices, they added.

My top10 medical stories from China for Saturday 22 February

1. Smoking with a water pipe confers a 'profound' risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) among people in south west China and also carries a high risk from passive smoking, researchers have shown.

2. Patients with pneumonia of unexplained origin should be promptly investigated for H7N9 risk factors such as exposure to poultry and they should also be given pre-emptive antiviral treatment such as Tamiflu, the Beijing health department has ordered.

3. About 85% of Chinese doctors experience burnout, with those who are younger, unmarried and working in emergcncy medicine having the highest risk of serious burnout, a study shows.

4. Fertility clinics in China need to become more patient-friendly as they are perceived as too impersonal and lacking in transparency and respect for patient informed consent, researchers say.

5. The stigma of mental illness in Chinese culture means that patients with schizophrenia often do not understand their medication and are unwilling to take any anti-psychotic medication, according to a study from the Guangzhou Psychiatric Hospital.

6. H. Pylori infection rates are over 90% among people in their thirties in Jiangsu, which may explain high rates of gastric cancer in the region, say researchers from Nanjing.

7. Babies in Shenyang have increased rates of neurodevelopmental deficits because their mothers were exposed to high levels of organophosphorous pesticides during pregnancy, according to a study in PLOS One.

8. Adenovirus has emerged as a significant cause of serious pneumonia in China, with a study showing that 5% of cases are attributable to the virus.

9.  People with tuberculosis are also at high risk of HIV, with rates of around 3% in groups tested in TB patients from Guangxi, Henan and Sichuan, say Chinese researchers.

10. A mediation service for patients involved in medical disputes with hospitals is to be launched in Shanghai and it will be open to patients where compensation claims exceed 30,000 yuan ($2900) regardless of whether the hospital refers them.

Pollution decreases Chinese men's sperm | H5N1 virus carried by wild birds | Adenovirus threat to PLA | Tuberculosis control failing

Pollution reduces Chinese men's fertility
The high levels of pollution found in Chinese cities are reducing the quality of men's semen, a study form Chongqing has shown. Researchers from the the Institute of Toxicology, College of Preventive Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing measured air pollution levels in Chongqing and in surrounding rural areas. They found an inverse correlation between measures of pollution such as PM10, SO2 and NO2 and semen quality. Published in the journal Environmental Pollution, their findings show that the highest sperm concentrations were seen in rural areas, whereas the lowest were seen in downtown areas of Chongqing. Conversely, the highlest levels of pollution were seen in urban areas, peaking in winter months.
"Exposure to higher concentrations of PM10, SO2, and NO2 in urban ambient air may account for worse semen quality in urban males," the researchers concluded.

Migratory birds carry pathogenic influenza virus
Wild birds migrating through Yunnan have been found to carry the highly pathogenic influenza H5N1 virus. A sampling of birds trapped by researchers found that the average carriage rate of H5N1 was 5%, but in some species such as cuckoos the rates were as high as 22%. The researchers said the birds could be possible vectors of influenza, especially if they shared ponds and drinking water with domestic birds. The findings are published in the Virology Journal.

Tuberculosis control failing because of migrant workers and the elderly
Doctors in rural Jiangsu say tuberculosis control is a problem because of difficulty in diagnosing and treating the disease in migrant workers and the elderly. These two groups were repeatedly documented as the main obstacles in effective tuberculosis control by doctors in a rural county near Suzhou. When interviewed by researchers, doctors also expressed their frustration with the lack of new drugs for treating tuberculosis patients. They said elderly patients were less health conscious and more prone to side effects, so doctors had to put extra effort into convincing elderly patients to adhere to TB treatment. Migrant workers were another probelm for TB control because they were often poorly educated, had little awareness of TB and had difficulty completing long term treatment because of their transient lifestyle. Difficulties also arose because migrant workers were poor and not covered by local health insurance schemes to pay for medical treatment and drugs for TB.
"Migrant workers coming from rural parts of China present a gloomy prospect for TB control in China," the researcher from the School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University said in PLOS One.

Respiratory virus threat to PLA
Clinicians in Sichuan have reported that a novel adenovirus is posing a serious threat to the health of China's military. The human adenovirus 55 (HAdV-55) has caused outbreaks of sever acute respiratory disease among adults and seems to be common in military trainee institutions. In an analysis of the virus found in samples from almost 200 young Chinese infected in recent years they found that it often caused severe pneumonia. They charactrised the makeup of the virus and warned that it posed a threat, but more research was needed to understand its diversity, dissemination, and transmission in China.

Sperm donor clinics are big business in Shanghai

For many young men in Shanghai it sounds an ideal way of making money while enjoying themselves. The Shanghai Municipality Human Sperm Bank pays up to 5,000 yuan ($821) to donors and hundreds of hopefuls arrive at the bank every week.
They head to the northern branch of Renji Hospital on Lingshan Road where, on the third floor, they will find the reception desk and entrance decorated with cartoons of cheerful sperm.
But it's far from cartoon fun in reality. Li Zheng is the director of the Shanghai Municipality Human Sperm Bank and he said the bank had two big problems. "The quality of the sperm offered is not good and there are not enough suitable donors."
Of the thousands of volunteers the bank sees every year, only 15 percent qualify as donors and 10 percent of these men will drop out after being accepted.
Ten years after it was established there are only around 5,000 sperm donations being stored at Renji at present although several thousand women have been impregnated. It's even more problematic in other parts of China where sperm banks only hold a tenth of this number of donations.
Source: Global Times

Crackdown on illegal fertility clinics

A new campaign will crack down on facilities offering illegal assisted reproductive technology services, which put both babies and mothers at risk.
Unauthorized use of the services, surrogate motherhood and the illegal collection and supply of sperm and eggs, as well as the illegal sale and abuse of ovulation induction medicine, will be targeted, the Ministry of Health said.
By the end of last year, there were 358 medical facilities on China's mainland licensed to carry out such services and operate sperm banks.
In Shanghai, there are eight such facilities, including a sperm bank at Renji Hospital.
All the approved facilities face re-evaluation and registration, while the ministry won't approve new applications during the year-long campaign. Any problems found must be rectified, or approval for the services would be rescinded, the ministry said.
The campaign will include a crackdown on the illegal collection and use of human eggs and sperm and the illegal sale of embryos and ovulation drugs. A hotline, 010-82647810, and e-mail account, art@chinawch.org.cn, have been set up for tips from the public. Checks on facilities will result in a blacklist of any offering illegal services, officials said.
The ministry said China's infertility rate was now between 7 and 10 percent, but some 70 to 80 percent of infertile women could conceive after changing their lifestyle and receiving proper medical treatment.
The technology can help about 20 percent of infertile couples to conceive, officials said. In 2011, around 350,000 people received the services and more than 60,000 previously infertile couples had given birth.
Song Guofan of the Shanghai Health Bureau, said the services are strictly supervised in the city and there had been no cases of illegal use.
Source: Shanghai Daily

Sex hospital opens in Wuhan for infertile couples

Despite the plethora of sex videos and DIY tomes on the art of conceiving, some couples face huge problems when it comes to having babies. Now an enterprising hospital in Hubei has introduced its "second nuptial chamber" to aid those affected.
Each room in the Songziniao hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, comprises 538 square feet of matrimonial bliss - red lamps, sex toys, automatically adjustable double bed and diagrams.
Sex-skill videos, nurse and air hostess uniforms are available on request.
Huazhong Normal University sex professor Peng Xiaohui highlighted the magnitude of the problem.
He once treated a couple who failed to conceive after three years of marriage. The reason - the husband had mistaken his wife's belly button for her privates.
A session in the nuptial chamber does not come cheap - couples will have to fork out 880 yuan (HK$1,093) per night.
Source: HK Standard

China sees surge in numbers seeking treatment for infertility

The number of Chinese seeking treatment for infertility is increasing, say reproductive medicine specialists

Although Wang Xia has a successful career as a university lecturer in central China's Henan Province, life is imperfect. She cannot bear a child.
"I really want to have a child and I've tried several hospitals for treatment but failed," Wang said, adding that she ended up divorced from her husband because they could not have a child.
Wang became pregnant after she got married but went for an induced abortion because she wanted to pursue her career.
A surgical infection caused her bilateral tubal obstruction, causing her reproductive disability.
According to statistics provided by the China Population Association, more than 40 million Chinese people are diagnosed with infertility, 12.5 percent of the total amount of people of childbearing age. The rate was only three percent 20 years ago.
The first test tube baby on the Chinese mainland was born in 1988 at the Center of Reproductive Medicine of the Third School of Clinical Medicine of Peking University, where about 1,500 patients every day queue to see reproductive experts.
Qiao Jie, director of the center, said many professional women postpone marriage and having a child, which may cause physical over-tiredness and even symptoms such as amenorrhea and menopausal hot flashes.
"Their productive ability deteriorates when they eventually want a child," Qiao added.
Twenty-two-year-old Xiaoyu, not her real name, had an ectopic pregnancy twice with one of her oviducts being removed.
"A careless induced abortion before marriage caused reproductive problems," she said. "I leave all my hope in the operation of the oviduct on the other side."
According to Guo Yihong, vice director with the Center of Reproductive Medicine of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, the number of infertile people is increasing with more than 150,000 patients accepting treatment from the center in 2011.
Zhang Cuilian, an expert in reproductive medicine of Henan Province People's Hospital, said that 70 percent of the female infertile and 50 percent of the male infertile was due to poor daily habits.
Tubal obstruction and endometrial over-thinness caused by induced abortions is the prime cause for female infertility, Zhang said.
Zhang knows of one couple where the woman had 10 abortions during her 20s, thinking that she and her partner would have a child at a later age. However, she could not bear a child when she was 30.
Experts also said living conditions may be the cause of infertility, such as street pollution, formaldehyde in newly bought furniture and radiation from daily electronic devices.
Staying up late and pressure are other reasons in developing infertility, said Peng Hongmei, associate chief physician of Gynecology and Obstetrics of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Hospital.
Peng has witnessed a surge in patient numbers seeking treatment during the last two years.
"The prime time for women to bear children is in their 20s to at most 35," Peng suggested. "Giving birth to children at a relative young age will not only increase pregnancy quality but also repress some gynecological diseases."
Couples who want children should go to a legal hospital for diagnosis if they have failed to have a child within one or two years, she added.
Source: Shanghai Daily