If you’re looking for a piece of good news to get you through the rest of the week, consider this inspiring story, reported recently by the “Today” show and MSNBC.com: The site reported that a “long-shot infertility treatment” done at the Cleveland Clinic, in which a single sperm was frozen, injected into a single egg and resulted in a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby – namely, Kenley Schiraldi, of Campbell, Ohio. Kenley’s mom was quoted as saying, “It was better than hitting the lottery; this never happens.”
It did appear to be a true long shot, given that the little girl’s father, Jason, produced no sperm and her mom had difficulty making viable eggs. Dr. Nina Desai, who heads up the Cleveland Clinic’s IVF lab, developed a technique that, reports MSNBC.com, “can find and story tiny amounts of sperm – or even just one…The sperm can then be frozen and later thawed for use in ICSI,” or intracytoplasmic sperm injection.
The single sperm used to conceive Kenley was found after nine hours of searching Jason’s tissue for a sperm to use to fertilize Jennifer’s eggs. Jennifer also made few eggs that could be used, further lowering the odds of success.
Not surprisingly, Desai told MSNBC.com that, “This has been one of the real miracles in our IVF program.”
