Danish authorities are to tighten rules governing sperm banks and fertility clinics following an incident involving donor sperm in which nine children have contracted a hereditary disease from the same donor, according to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.

The condition concerned is NF1 – or neurofibromatosis Type 1.

New National Board of Health rules to take effect on Oct. 1, determine that sperm from a single donor may only be used to impregnate a maximum of 12 women, and make it clear that any indication of the transfer of a hereditary disease must cause an immediate stop to the use of the donor concerned.

The new rules come in the light of disclosures of a case involving the Nordisk Cryobank, whose donor Number 7042 has provided sperm to produce 43 children at 14 different clinics. The donor is said to be a carrier of NF1.

The Danish Broadcasting Corporation news programme 21 Sunday, which broadcast the issue this weekend, said it had information that nine of the children concerned had NF1.

According to the report, the sperm bank received its first warning in June 2009, when a fertility clinic contacted Nordisk Cryobank with information that one of the donor’s children had been born with NF1.

It was not until six months later that Nordisk Cryobank reacted, during which time two women were impregnated with 7042 sperm. The issue of one of these two is ill.

Director Peter Bower of the Nordic Cryobank says the bank did not react immediately as its doctors did not determine the illness had anything to do with its donor.

“This was something that our team of doctors and our geneticist studied, and their assessment was that there were no grounds to suspect the donor and thus to stop supplies from this donor,” Bower says.

The bank has, however, changed its procedures and will be following the National Board of Health rules to immediately stop supplies in connection with any suspicion of a hereditary disease.

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