Infertile couples, lower quality of life

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Childless couples have a lower quality of life after fertility treatments than parents with children and no infertility problems, Swedish researchers say.

Marianne Johansson, a midwife at the Institute of Health and Care Sciences at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and colleagues interviewed women and men after in vitro fertilization failed in giving them children. All the men had a diagnosis of severe male factor infertility.

At the time of the study, 40 percent had biological children after further IVF treatment and 35 percent had adopted children.

The women say childlessness felt like bereavement while the men say they often feel frustrated by not knowing the cause of their infertility.

"We then compared this group with couples for whom the treatment had resulted in childbirth, plus a control group of parents without infertility problems who had children of the same age," Johansson says in a statement.

The couples living without children -- men and women -- had a significantly poorer quality of life than the couples whose fertility treatment had been successful and the couples in the control group, the thesis says.

"They perceived their infertility as central to their lives and above all that quality of life amongst men without children was more negatively affected than had been previously reported in studies of involuntary childlessness," Johansson says.