- LONDON (Reuters) - German doctors warned Friday about the danger of
using fresh donor sperm for artificial insemination after a woman was infected
with the virus that causes AIDS.
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- Dr. Bertfried Matz and colleagues at
the University of Bonn said doctors should be discouraged from using fresh
donor sperm as this would not allow enough time for tests to be made to
establish that the sperm is safe to use.
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- ``As long as quarantine storage (of a
period of three months) of anonymous sperm donation is not mandatory in
all countries, artificial insemination still has to be taken into consideration
as a source of HIV infection,'' Matz wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical
journal.
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- Initially the 35-year-old woman denied
any risk factors in her private life, but she later admitted to doctors
that three weeks before her illness she had received fresh donor sperm.
Although the sperm donor had tested negative for HIV (human immunodeficiency
virus) at the time of the insemination, three months later when he was
retested he was positive.
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- Further tests on both the woman and the
donor showed the viral sequence in both of them was identical, suggesting
the woman was infected by the man's sperm.
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