Gender (Sex) Selection

ViaGene Fertility offers the only proven method that is essentially 100% accurate in selecting the gender of a future child. Throughout history couples wishing to conceive have shown much interest in choosing whether that child would be male or female. Techniques for enriching the environment surrounding the egg at the time of fertilization with male or female bearing sperm includes timing intercourse, douching, sperm washing and more recently flow cytometry. At best, some of these methods increase the odds of having a boy or girl, but all are a gamble and fail to come close to 100%.

The most reliable method of gender selection involves IVF and PGD. The gender of a child is determined by the sex chromosome in the sperm that fertilizes the egg. Sperm carrying an "X" chromosome combines with the "X" chromosome found in all eggs to form an "XX" or female embryo. Approximately half of the sperm will carry a "Y" chromosome and when uniting with the egg produces an "XY" or male embryo. Using molecular probes specific for either X or Y chromosome, we can confidently identify which chromosome is carried by the resulting embryo.

Couples may choose gender selection for several reasons. One would be for family balancing. Although in the general population the odds of having a male or female child is 50:50, every family doesn't end up with an equal number of boys or girls. Some are even dealt an odds-defying 100% all boy or all girl offspring. For whatever their personal reason may be, some couples with three, four or even more children of the same gender are intent on having at least one child whose sex is not the same as the rest of their children. Rather than continuing to add to the world's population and subject themselves to undue financial and health risks by repeated pregnancies until they achieve a child of their desired gender, many couples elect to do PGD with us because of its effectiveness. It requires utilizing IVF because the embryos must be available outside the body for a single cell to be taken from the preimplantation embryo for genetic analysis. Once the sex of the embryo is determined, those of the desired gender are replaced into the mother and the remaining embryos cryopreserved for future use or donated. Another reason for gender selection is to avoid X-linked diseases in the desired child. The accuracy that accompanies PGD is even more crucial when female embryos must be identified with certainty in order for the offspring to not be affected by an X-linked disease such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

The examples gender selection mentioned above usually involve couples who have no fertility problem and therefore the chances of success with the technique are extremely high in our hands. Infertile couples also, however, can take advantage of PGD for sex selection during their treatment since they are normally going to be utilizing IVF anyway. Whether the couple has a male or female infertility factor usually has no bearing on the utility of PGD. All fertile and infertile couples using PGD for gender identification should consider incorporating a few other chromosomes into the analysis (such as the chromosome for Down Syndrome) since this can be done concurrently with X/Y identification and the extra cost is relatively minor. Not only does this approach help assure that a healthy baby of the desired sex will be achieved, but identifying healthy embryos to be replaced increases the chance for pregnancy and ultimate success.