[Assisted reproduction and hepatitis C virus infection]

Medically assisted procreation poses a difficult problem when one or both partners of couple are infected with HCV. Epidemiologic and fundamental works show a low risk of HCV sexual transmission and no pregnancy complications or fetal abnormalities have been reported. However, the outcome of HCV infected children is unknown. These contrasting findings suggest that medically assisted procreation using sperm of spouse needs to be cautious. Before medically assisted procreation, testing of couples for HCV antibodies must be done and interferon therapy is required for patients with histological chronic active hepatitis and for HCV positive mothers or infected couples. In the absence of specific legislation or consensual recommendations, detailed informations must be given to the couples in order to obtain an informed consent.