Women with cystic fibrosis can have safe and successful fertility...(e carefully assessed and they should rec...),Health

"Treatments inducing ovulation must be conducted with the goal of achieving a moderate response and a single pregnancy, and close monitoring for prenatal care is needed throughout the pregnancy. It is important for CF women to have singleton pregnancies because of the extra strain that a multiple pregnancy would place on the lungs and heart, for nutritional balance, and because of the additional risks of premature birth, which could be linked to abdominal efforts caused by coughing. In addition, a single birth is easier for these women to manage for post-natal care and medical follow-up."

Diabetes and glucose intolerance occur frequently in people with CF, due to the worsening of their pancreatic disease. Some CF women have diabetes before pregnancy and so it needs to be under perfect control with insulin before they become pregnant. Other CF women can develop diabetes as a result of their pregnancy (gestational diabetes), and this also needs to be carefully controlled and monitored although it frequently disappears once the woman has given birth.

Together with Dr Dominique Hubert, a lung specialist and co-ordinator of the network, Dr Epelboin is setting up a long-term survey that follows the CF mothers, couples and children and compares them to women who require ART but who do not have a severe genetic disease. "We want to see how they fare with regards to ethical concerns about the welfare of the child growing up in a family where the mother has CF, and how the mother's prospects or need for a transplant and her limited life expectancy affect the child and the family. It is only through such long-term monitoring that we can confirm our preliminary optimistic conclusions," she said.

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