Sperm washing

The AIDS (HIV) virus is transmitted through semen, blood and milk.An HIV (AIDS virus) positive man who wants to have children has the following options:

1. using a condom so as not to infect his wife and not having children.
2. having sex without a condom and risking giving both his wife and future child the virus.
3. using a the sperm from an HIV negative anonymous donor from a Sperm Bank.
4. washing the sperm, thus eliminating the virus and using only the fertile portion (the motile sperm) in order to carry out artificial insemination or in vitro fertilisation with ICSI (IVF-ICSI).

With this sperm washing technique, the CEFER Institute is a pioneer in Spain and only the second centre worldwide to offer it. More than 300 children have been born as a result of the application of these techniques in our centre and no woman or child has been infected with the virus.

FACTS
The way the virus is transmitted from men to women is through semen. Semen is comprised of three basic components: seminal plasma, cells (T4 cells, macrophages) and sperm. The HIV virus is present in the seminal plasma, T4 cells and macrophages. In the laboratory, we can separate the three components using a technique called “sperm washing”.

The section of semen obtained after washing is frozen and part of it is analysed using the PCR technique in case the HIV virus is still present. In 98% of cases, the virus is not present after washing. The frozen sperm, free of HIV, is unfrozen and used in the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) with ICSI technique, where a single spermatozoid is introduced into each mature egg.

HIV SEROPOSITIVE WOMEN
Couples where the woman or both partners are HIV (AIDS virus) positive are also treated at the CEFER Institute.