Screening naar Chlamydia trachomatis bij allogene spermadonoren: is het noodzakelijk om elke donatie te testen of volstaan periodieke tests?

Abstract

Screening for Chlamydia trachomatis in allogeneic sperm donation: is it necessary to test every donation or is periodic screening sufficient? There are several guidelines regarding the screening of sperm donors. For hepatitis B and C and HIV, these guidelines are unambiguous, but the recommendations for Chlamydia trachomatis are, on the contrary, very heterogeneous. Until 30 June 2021, a 3-monthly screening for C. trachomatis was performed at Brussels IVF (Belgium) on all sperm donors. This periodic screening has been questioned given the theoretical risk for transmission in sperm donation. The researchers collected sperm donations before 30 June 2021, when urine was not tested for C. trachomatis at each donation. Of the 1,809 untested donations, 190 donations from 42 sperm donors were randomly selected. These 190 sperm donations were tested for C. trachomatis using a nucleic acid test (NAT). For the tested 190 sperm straws, no infection with C. trachomatis was detected after NAT. These results show that the initial method of periodic testing seems sufficiently safe and cost-efficient to exclude infections with C. trachomatis. Both post-hoc testing of untested straws as well as testing at each donation seem therefore unnecessary.