Learning Objectives for Lecture 3: Infertility, Assisted Reproductive Technologies

(ART) and Birth Defects

1. Zhu et al and Davies et al both used retrospective cohort studies to

evaluate whether ART is associated with a child being born with a major
birth defect. Both studies came to the same major conclusions. What were
those conclusions?
2. Zhu et al calculated both the hazards ratio and adjusted hazards ratios for
the effects of ART. What is the difference between a hazards ratio and an
adjusted hazards ratio?
3. Do different ART procedures present different risks to the child that is
conceived? Defend your answer in one sentence.
4. Is a single epidemiological study sufficient to prove that conception by
ART places the child at a greater risk for a major birth defect? Why? Why
Not?
5. Do Zhu et al or Davies et al discriminate between the effect of the ART
protocol and the effect of gamete quality? Why is this question important?
6. Jacques et al studied whether a subfertile woman is at a greater medical
risk from conception than a fertile woman. Define a major risk to the
subfertile woman and its pathophysiological causes.
7. Sun et al evaluated the effects of double strand breaks on the function of
human sperm. How did they measure double strand breaks? In one
sentence describe the most important finding of this study.
8. In the context of the papers discussed in this lecture, describe in one
sentence the most important finding of Dumoulin et al.