MONDAY, May 27, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- A recent experiment with infertile laboratory mice has given scientists hope that gene therapy may one day be able to reverse human sterility.
Scientists have used gene therapy to reverse infertility in male mice, says a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The treated mice produced healthy offspring that did not contain the introduced gene, which shows that using gene therapy to treat male infertility doesn't genetically alter the offspring, says the research team led by scientists from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
The mice in this study were unable to make sperm because they had mutations in a gene called KL2 in their Sertoli cells. Those are cells in the testes that aid in sperm development.
The scientists introduced functional KL2 genes into the mice, whose sperm production was restored to normal levels. The sperm cells from the treated mice were tested for their ability to produce offspring.
The results suggest that gene therapy may also be used to safely treat male infertility in humans, the researchers say.
About 1 in 5 of every couple worldwide has fertility problems, and about a third to a half of those result from male infertility.
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This isn't the first experiment in gene therapy and sterility. A HealthDay story in January reported that Japanese scientists were the first to announce the successful use of gene therapy to treat male infertility.
