MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Jean-Louis Serre
EA 2493 ‘Pathologie Cellulaire and Génétique, de la Conception à la Naissance’, Université de Versailles, Saint Quentin en Yvelines, France
SFGH (Société Française de Génétique Humaine), Villejuif, France
and
Jean-Pierre Siffroi
Commission de Génétique, Fédération Française des CECOS,
UMR S933 INSERM/Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), Paris, France
MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study?
Answers:
- Anonymous sperm donation may lead to unions between relatives, especially between half-siblings and to an increase of both consanguinity and the frequencies of recessive diseases. We made an evaluation of the actual consequences of anonymous sperm donation in France and we concluded that they can be considered as negligible when compared to those due to false paternities, four times higher.
- The risk of inadvertent unions between half-sibs is often advocated and we showed that it may be estimated to as few as one case every 10 years. Consequently, the main level of consanguinity in the French population is not modified and unions between first cousins within the sub-population from Mediterranean origin remain the main source of consanguinity.