# How important is CMV?



## mommum (Feb 10, 2015)

Hi everyone

My wife and I were planning on using donor sperm from a very old friend for IUI, we went to a private clinic and had various tests. 

Everything was fine except that the donor was CMV positive (not currently infected) but tests indicate he had the infection in childhood. My wife is CMV positive too but I am CMV negative. 

We both want to use the same donor to get pregnant at some stage.

The doctor at the clinic said that we shouldn't go ahead with our known donor due to the difference in CMV status. 

That was a huge blow to us but we went away and tried to get used to the idea of an anonymous donor. 

With that behind us, we decided we wanted to move clinics as we'd found the service at the first place we went to pretty shambolic.

We went to a new clinic (which was a breath of fresh air) and had another initial consultation with a new doctor, with the intention of using anonymous donor sperm. 

We were explaining our history to the new doctor and told her we weren't proceeding with our known donor due to my difference in CMV status and the doctor said (direct quote), "that's ********"! 

The doctor said that I have more chance of getting CMV from my wife's bodily fluids than from sterile, quarantined and washed sperm. She said it's more likely that I would contract it when pregnant from a small child, like anyone else who is pregnant could. She also said that straight couples don't get this checked out before conceiving, it's not something they would ever think about.

So now...we're pretty confused! We've had two polar opposite opinions on this. We've been doing research and can't find any cases where CMV has been contracted from donor sperm but obviously we want to do this as safely as possible.

We would prefer to use our known donor, if we can.

Does anyone have any experience with this? 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

MM


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## wibble-wobble (Apr 16, 2011)

Hi, 

Me and my husband were told the chance of anything bad happening re mixing Cmv -/+ was so tiny it was a .something % 

He also said there was more chance in contracting it out in the real world, than from having Icsi, even though this was his opinion it was still against policy to match +/-  the effect it could have if you were to contract it (even with the slim chance) went against what they were trying to achieve at the clinic. A take home healthy baby

If you are willing to accept the risk of what could happen and like you say a couple TTC naturally wouldn't get the test then go for the donor you are happy with


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## mommum (Feb 10, 2015)

Thanks wibble-wobble, we really appreciate your advice. 

Wishing you lots of luck with your journey


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## CrazyHorse (May 8, 2014)

I would say your second doctor provided a more accurate picture. Contracting CMV in pregnancy is no joke, but if you are having IUI with washed sperm, the odds of your contracting CMV that way are almost negligible. It would be entirely different if you were doing artificial insemination with whole semen, like if you were doing a DIY approach at home with a turkey baster! But you're not. If you have solid reasons for much preferring to proceed with your known donor versus an anonymous one, I'd say that would outweigh the tiny CMV risk. However, some clinics will still have a policy of insisting that a CMV- recipient only use gametes from a CMV- donor. Usually this wouldn't matter as you'd just be selecting from a bunch of donors you didn't know, but obviously your case is different. Good luck with your decision!


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