In June, the message about the ReproUnion Biobank and Infertility Cohort (RUBIC) spread across Danish, Swedish and scientific media – exactly one year after RUBIC enrolled the first infertile couples!
“Today every 10th child is conceived after fertility treatment and in many cases the treatment is needed due to problems with the man’s semen quality. However, knowledge of male fertility is low, so Father’s Day is a good occasion to increase it and thereby also the chance for more men and women to have children, if they so wish,” commented Niels Jørgensen in Dagens Medicin, who alongside Berlingske shared the news, which ReproUnion sent out in connection with Father’s Day in Denmark on the 5th of June.
At the same time as the RUBIC message was spreading in public channels, it also reached the scientific community, when Andrology published the article: A binational clinical foundation to study risk factors, life course, and treatment of infertility and infertility-related morbidity. It explains the process and what data/material the biobank collects to address three main questions:
- What are the risk factors and natural life courses of infertility, early embryonic loss, and adverse pregnancy outcomes?
- Can we develop new diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for fecundity and treatment success?
- What are the health characteristics of women and men in infertile couples at the time of fertility treatment and during long-term follow-up?
Life Science Sweden and News Øresund also featured headlines about the unique biobank and the aim to answer more questions about infertility, as biological material is collected from participants in RUBIC. The expectation is that 5000 couples in the Øresund region will be included.
“Researchers have long suspected that environmental factors and lifestyle can have an impact, but we still need to understand more about the mechanisms behind infertility. Thanks to existing registers we know more now than in the 70ies, and when we have collected the data for this unique RUBIC study, we will find out a lot more than we know today!” says Margareta Kitlinski, who is continuously interviewed by Swedish media on the back of ReproUnion’s media activity, initially prepared for the Day of Involuntary Childlessness in Sweden on the 29th of May. Please follow our media page!
Niels Jørgensen is Chief Physician at the department for Growth and Reproduction at Rigshospitalet, where they see all the men enrolled in the study on the Danish side. Margareta Kitlinski, Chief Physician at Skåne’s University Hospital, and head of section at Reproduktionsmedicinskt centrum, is co-responsible for RUBIC in Sweden. You can meet both in the RUBIC films: Nøglen til bedre fertilitet // Nyckeln till bättre fertilitet
