Reproductive and sexual health in adolescents with cystic fibrosis.

Abstract

Advances in therapeutic technologies have created a new generation of adolescents with chronic disease and disability. Once uniformly considered a fatal disease of infancy and childhood, cystic fibrosis is now considered a life limiting disease of adults, and median survival is at least to the fourth decade in most developed countries. In this changing context, it is timely to reflect on the significance of sexual and reproductive health in young people with chronic disease and the challenge this presents to their health care professionals. Infertility in men with cystic fibrosis was first reported almost three decades ago, as survival through adolescence began to increase.1 2 3 We now know that almost all males with the disease are infertile due to abnormal development of the mesonephric portion of the reproductive tract. Recent reproductive developments have focused on the aetiology …