By The Associated Press Comments 
1
Published: October 25, 2009
CHICAGO — A sperm donor passed on a potentially deadly genetic heart condition to nine of his 24 children, including one who died at age 2 from heart failure, according to a medical journal report.
It’s the second documented case of a genetic condition being inherited through sperm donation.
The latest case highlights screening sperm donors, according to the report and an editorial accompanying the doctors’report in last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
The San Francisco sperm bank involved now gives all donors electrocardiogram tests to weed out men with genetic heart problems; the study authors recommend other sperm banks do so as well.
Voluntary sperm bank guidelines say donors should provide a complete medical history to rule out those with infectious diseases or a family history of inherited diseases.
Many also do testing but for genetic diseases that are less common than the heart problem called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, according to co-author Dr. Barry Maron of the Minneapolis Heart Institute, a leading authority on the condition.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy thickens the heart and makes it harder to pump blood. It affects about one in 500 people; many more likely have the genetic defect without symptoms, said study co-author Heidi Rehm of Harvard Medical School.
Symptoms can include an irregular heartbeat and shortness of breath. The condition is often the culprit when young athletes collapse and die suddenly. The donor, now 42, had no symptoms of genetic heart disease when he donated sperm in the early 1990s. His own condition wasn’t diagnosed until after a child born through sperm donation was diagnosed.
The children are now ages 7 to 16.
The only other documented case of a disease inherited through sperm donation involved a rare blood disease.
