Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Why Natural Killer (NK) cell testing for IVF failures is a lot of hocus-pocus

Unfortunately, the 'killer' label is a complete misnomer and has given rise to an entire industry within assisted reproductive technology (ART) ( IVF, ICSI and recurrent miscarriage clinics ) aimed at targeting these cells. It has now become common practice for these clinics to charge patients significant sums of money for measurements of uNK cells or blood NK (or both). Providers of such tests have invented a rationale in which they claim that raised levels of NK cells leads to the body 'rejecting' or 'attacking' the embryo, resulting in early pregnancy loss. There is absolutely no evidence that this ever occurs.
http://www.bionews.org.uk/page.asp?obj_id=583653&PPID=584008&sid=92

This is a very thoughtful summary, and will help protect credulous patients who are being taken for a ride by  unscrupulous IVF doctors.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous11:03 PM

    love this info! great to know that NK cells are horrible and testing them is a waste of time

    ReplyDelete