Euronews gets the lowdown from ReproUnion's Project Manager, Kristine Koppelhus.
The ReproUnion project, supported by the European Union, came to fruition 10 years ago. Why did Brussels support this project and what are its objectives? Kristine Koppelhus provided her insights.
"The project was initiated in 2010 by two friends. They were doctors and researchers. One from the Danish side and the other from the Swedish side. They were both studying male infertility. They wanted to do more for couples experiencing problems with reproductive health. It is one of the most common diseases for people between 25 and 45 years-of-age.
"And it's increasing. This is also more general for many European countries, where fertility rates are dropping. We need to have more than two children per woman to sustain the population that we have today. This is what we are seeing in many countries in Europe.
"The RUBIC cohort is unique. I believe this is the only initiative in Europe where you have a binational cohort of infertile couples. So it would be amazing if we could also start collecting this data from other countries. In addition, it would be great to have data sets on fertile couples, so that we have samples on the healthy population in combination with infertility problems," concluded Koppelhus.