MADRID (Reuters) - A technique that allows infertile men to have children can transfer the cause of the problem to their children, but it does not generate any new genetic defects, scientists said on Tuesday.

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI, has enabled men with low sperm counts or poor-quality sperm to father children. But Professor Gianpiero Palermo, of the Cornell Institute for Reproductive Medicine in New York, told a fertility conference that children born through ICSI can inherit the genetic cause of the father's infertility.

"Thus far, it appears that ICSI is not responsible for generating abnormalities in the offspring," he said. "However, because of the ability to treat men with severely compromised semen parameters, and who are possible carriers of chromosomal defects, ICSI may allow transmission of these abnormalities to children."

Dr. Palermo recommended genetic testing for both parents and counseling before ICSI.

"It is paramount that couples are aware of the potential to pass on genetic defects to their child," he told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) meeting.

Dr. Palermo and his colleague Dr. Yukiko Katagiri screened 35 men with oligospermia for three common genetic problems linked to male infertility, including microdeletions on the Y chromosome. They also did genetic tests on blood samples of 28 of the men's children who had been conceived through ICSI.

"There is no evidence from our data that the children born from the ICSI procedure had any new microdeletions, although we cannot completely exclude the possibility that new deletions could appear in these children. ICSI allowed these men to reproduce, thereby passing on the existing deletion to their sons," said Dr. Katagiri.

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