A sci­en­tif­ic break­through at Queen's Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast of­fers fresh hope to mil­lions of cou­ples suf­fer­ing from un­ex­plained in­fer­til­i­ty.

In a study of 239 cou­ples with that di­ag­no­sis, re­searchers found that in 80 per cent of cas­es, the men had high sperm DNA dam­age. They can now be fast-tracked to the ap­pro­pri­ate treat­ment for that spe­cif­ic prob­lem.

Every year, about 50,000 cou­ples in the UK re­quire fer­til­i­ty treat­ment. These find­ings will save them time, mon­ey and heartache, Queen's sci­en­tists said.

Pro­fes­sor Sheena Lewis from the School of Med­i­cine, Den­tistry and Bio­med­ical Sci­ences at Queen's, said this was "a huge find­ing." She said it was a break­through rather than a cure, but that it of­fered "a way to fer­til­i­ty."

"For al­most one-third of cou­ples, un­til now, there has been no ob­vi­ous cause for in­fer­til­i­ty and these cou­ples are giv­en the di­ag­no­sis of 'un­ex­plained in­fer­til­i­ty'," she said.

"These cou­ples of­ten in­vest a lot of time and mon­ey in fer­til­i­ty treat­ments like in­tra-uter­ine in­sem­i­na­tion which are un­like­ly to be suc­cess­ful.

"In our study, we have now had a break­through which ex­plains the cause of in­fer­til­i­ty for many of those cou­ples.

"Now that we have found the cause of in­fer­til­i­ty for these cou­ples, suit­able treat­ments can be tai­lored for them which will di­rect them straight to the best treat­ment and in­crease their chances of hav­ing a ba­by."

Pro­fes­sor Lewis said a mil­lion cou­ples across the world were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for in­fer­til­i­ty every year.

"This will save them time, it will save them mon­ey and it will save them the heartache of failed fer­til­i­ty treat­ments," she said.

"Noth­ing is a guar­an­tee but it will give them a bet­ter chance."

The study al­so has a sec­ond ma­jor find­ing. It is the first study to show that the chances of hav­ing a ba­by af­ter IVF is close­ly re­lat­ed to the amount of DNA dam­age a man has in each of his sperm.

The uni­ver­si­ty is al­so work­ing through Lewis Fer­til­i­ty Test­ing to make the test avail­able to any­one who needs it.

The test is al­so be­ing tri­alled in Chi­na.

Pro­fes­sor Lewis said the break­through was a re­sult of lo­cal tal­ent and was hav­ing a glob­al im­pact.

How­ev­er, Pro­fes­sor Christo­pher Bar­ratt, pro­fes­sor of re­pro­duc­tive Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dundee said that most clin­ics would not test for high sperm dam­age be­cause of un­cer­tain­ty over what to do with the re­sults.

He al­so point­ed out that al­though high sperm dam­age was found in the ma­jor­i­ty of cou­ples, it may not be the on­ly cause of their fer­til­i­ty prob­lems.

"Whether this type of test­ing pre­dicts which treat­ment you should is not yet clear.

"The ques­tion is whether this type of test­ing is go­ing to help and that is where the ev­i­dence needs to be stronger." (bbchealth.com)