One to Two Children per Class: Nearly 500,000 Babies Born Thanks to Reproductive Medicine

afp | In Germany, since 1997, almost 434,000 babies have been born after fertility treatments. This corresponds to the population of two cities such as Saarbrücken and Chemnitz together, according to the German IVF Registry on Saturday in Düsseldorf, citing current data. Today, mathematically, there are one to two children in every classroom who were conceived with the help of fertility medicine.

As a “milestone,” the IVF Registry described in its current yearbook that the multiple birth rate after artificial fertilization has fallen below ten percent for the first time. This means a lower risk for mothers and children. While after successful treatment, in the past two or more embryos were often transferred, today usually only a single embryo is transferred into the uterus to achieve a pregnancy.

In 2017, 22 percent of all births achieved through in vitro fertilization (IVF) were multiple births; by 2023, this share dropped to 9.3 percent. Multiple pregnancies carry the risk of miscarriages and premature births or developmental disorders in the child.

Treatments such as in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) with donor sperm are therefore increasing. After 1,129 treatments in 2018, their number had almost tripled to 3,177 cases in 2023.

The Cause of Infertility Lies Mostly With the Man

In more than half of the cases, the cause of infertility lies with the man, often due to limited sperm quality. The number of treatments for solo mothers who want to raise their child without a partner, as well as for lesbian couples, has risen sharply in recent years.

In vitro fertilization involves retrieving mature eggs from a woman after hormonal treatment and fertilizing them in a laboratory dish with the man’s sperm. After a few days, the fertilized eggs or a single egg are implanted back into the woman. ICSI is an additional method of artificial fertilization when the sperm cells cannot fertilize an egg in the fallopian tube or in the laboratory dish. In this process, a single sperm is injected directly into a previously retrieved egg using an extremely fine needle.

Since 1997, fertility treatment data in Germany have been electronically documented. Since then, more than 2.6 million treatments have been recorded. A total of 433,858 children were born following artificial fertilization.