Doctor issues urgent plea as sperm donor used to conceive 67 kids passes cancer-causing gene on to them - 10 now confirmed to have the disease
A doctor has issued an urgent plea after it was revealed a sperm donor used to conceive at least 67 children across Europe has passed on a rare cancer-causing mutation.
Around 23 of those conceived from the donor's sperm between 2008 and 2015 have been found to carry a variant in the TP53 gene which provides instructions for making tumour proteins.
And 10 of these children have already been diagnosed with cancers such as leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The case was described by Dr Edwige Kasper, a biologist at Rouen University Hospital in France, as an 'abnormal dissemination of genetic disease'.
She urged The Guardian: 'We need to have a European limit on the number of births or families for a single donor.
'We can't do whole-genome sequencing for all sperm donors – I'm not arguing for that,' she added.
'But this is the abnormal dissemination of genetic disease. Not every man has 75 children across Europe.'
The shocking revelation came to light when two separate families contacted their fertility clinics after their children were diagnosed with cancers connected to the a variant in the TP53 gene.
Analysis by the European Sperm Bank which supplied the sperm confirmed that the rare variant was present in some of the donor's sperm.
But they emphasised that it was not known to be linked to cancer at the time the sperm was donated in 2008 and it would not have been detected using standard screening techniques.
Furthermore, the donor is thought to be in good health.
The European Sperm Bank said that more than 67 children had been conceived using the donor's sperm, but that its policy does not allow them to confirm exact numbers of children for a specific donor. It said all of the relevant clinics had been alerted.
Julie Paulli Budtz, a spokesperson for the European Sperm Bank, said: 'We are deeply affected by this case.'
Although the donor had been thoroughly tested, she said that 'it is scientifically simply not possible to detect disease-causing mutations in a person's gene pool if you don't know what you are looking for'.
She added: 'We welcome continued dialogue on setting an internationally mandated family limit, and have advocated for this on several occasions.
'This is also why we have proactively implemented our own international limit of 75 families per donor.'
It is suggested that children who have the mutated TP53 gene undergo whole body and brain MRI scans.
They are also advised to have regular breast and abdomen ultrasounds throughout adulthood.
The case has sparked questions about the challenge of tracing the families affected and the lack of internationally agreed limits surrounding the use of a single sperm donor.
Many European countries have their own limits on either the number of families that can use a donor or the number of children that can be conceived using the same donor.
Current UK law allows for sperm from a single donor to be used to create a maximum of 10 families.
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