Japanese Woman Infected With HIV Through Artificial Insemination

In Tokyo Monday, a researcher announced that a woman who was incorrectly given an artificial insemination treatment using sperm from her HIV-positive husband has been infected with the virus. The case is the first in Japan in which artificial insemination has caused HIV infection.

The woman, whose name and age were not revealed, underwent the treatment at a hospital in western Japan several years ago, said Hideji Hanabusa, a doctor specializing in hematology at Ogikubo Hospital in Tokyo. The artificial insemination treatment "was not properly carried out," according to Hanabusa, who recently treated the woman and found her to be HIV-positive.

Hanabusa said the hospital skipped several procedures, including the "swim-up," in which active sperm that have been filtered in a centrifuge can be stripped from leucocytes and lymph cells subject to the virus.

"We also found another case in which artificial insemination was carried out improperly, but the patient was not found to be infected," Hanabusa said. "If we don't deal with such inadequate practices, patients will face fear of infection not only with [HIV] but also hepatitis C and other dangerous viruses. Guidelines and screening procedures for artificial insemination treatments must be introduced as a matter of urgency," he said.

Hanabusa is to report the two cases at a meeting of the Japan Society for AIDS Research that opens Thursday in Nagoya in central Japan.

The first successful birth using sperm from an HIV-infected father in Japan took place in 2001 using a method pioneered in Italy and Spain. The mother and child have been confirmed infection-free. Several other successful cases have been reported since. Last October, Hanabusa treated a woman who delivered an infection-free baby boy in what was claimed to be the world's first case of in vitro fertilization using sperm stripped of HIV.

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