Gender Selection in North Cyprus - Choosing your baby's sex

Gender selection, or sex selection refers to selecting the sex of your unborn baby prior to pregnancy. At North Cyprus IVF Centre, this option is offered to two groups of patients:

1- Couples who would like to select the sex of their child due to a known genetic predisposition to a sex-linked (X-linked) condition. X-linked diseases are single gene disorders that point to the presence of gene mutations or gene defects on the X chromosome. Since males only acquire one copy of the X chromosome from the mother, only one mutated allele is sufficient to cause a sex-linked disease on males. This suggests that males are more prone to the majority of X-linked diseases compared to females.

2- Couples who already have children and would like to balance their family by having another child of the opposite sex. This group of patients usually have no fertility issues and are able to have healthy children via natural conception methods. However, natural conception may not always produce “balanced” offspring, therefore, assisted reproductive technologies come into play.

Regardless of your reasoning, gender selection can be legally offered at North Cyprus IVF Centre to both groups of patients. There are two alternative methods in practice at North Cyprus IVF Centre regarding sex selection. Namely, these are Pre-Implantation Genetic Screening/Diagnosis (PGS/PGD) and MicroSort.

1- Pre-implantation Genetic Screening / Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis
PGD (Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis) refers to embryo selection as a response to a known genetic disorder running in the family, therefore, it is applied purely for genetic disease prevention purposes. PGS (Pre-implantation Genetic Screening), on the other hand, refers to applying the exact same method of embryo selection in cases where there is no known genetic disorder in the male or the female partner. PGS is the correct term used when the technology is used to screen the embryos for identifying their sex (known as sex/gender selection)

The PGD/PGS technique is used as a part of an IVF treatment. The patient must undergo IVF treatment so that we can obtain her eggs (or donor eggs can also be used in cases where the female patient cannot use her own eggs). The eggs obtained are fertilized with the male partner’s semen sample and embryos are created. Once the embryos reach a certain stage of development, they are biopsied so that genetic screening can be performed and the sex of each embryo can be revealed accordingly.

2- MicroSort
North Cyprus IVF Centre is the only official clinic offering MicroSort in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa. MicroSort is a sperm sorting method which enables us to sort a sperm sample into X (female) and Y (male) bearing cells. That way, by having a sperm sample sorted into two batches, we know which sperm batch has the capability of producing a male child and which one can produce a female child.

However, the MicroSort technology is not as accurate as the PGS method described above. It is only 75% accurate for selecting Y-bearing cells and about 85% accurate for selecting X-bearing cells. In other words, if you opt for using the MicroSort technique only without the PGS technique, there is a likelihood that the sex of your child may not be accurately selected.  

The MicroSort technology also has certain requirements. The semen sample of the male partner must contain a minimum of 70 million total motile sperm in the ejaculate so that the sort equipment can be used. For sperm samples that do not meet this criteria, the sort mechanism does not work properly and we cannot get desired results.

If the sperm sample is found sufficient for MicroSort, and if the patients are willing to accept a lower accuracy of sex selection, the MicroSort technique can be part of an artificial insemination (IUI) cycle, which allows for a non-invasive treatment.

More information on our alternative gender selection treatments can be found on the "Gender Selection" page of our website.

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