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Hello everyone! I am new here. My partner has been diagnosed with Chronic Myleloid Leukemia. We have a 2 year old son, and before the diagnosis have lost two babies. The first loss was at 9 weeks, the second being at 17 weeks. We were trying for another both times, and wanted to continue to try after we mourned our baby girl. The doctor advised us to stop all efforts for another baby while he is being treated with Gleevec. This is mainly because not much is known about conception while on Gleevec. What I'm wondering is, if we seek out a fertility specialist, get some testing done, do we have a chance? If and when he is able to go off the Gleevec, it will likely be too late for us to try for another child. Thank you so much for taking the time to read (and hopefully respond) I appreciate all answers and opinions!

Hi there, 

Sorry for the short response, I'll try to post more detail later but basically all the latest evidence shows that it is perfectly fine to father a child whilst taking imatinib. No issues. You should not need a fertility specialist just because he's taking imatinib. 

Imatinib has the most study behind it, but even with some of the newer TKIs it seems to also be safe to father a child while taking them but this is an evolving opinion with less evidence than what is behind imatinib. 

You'll probably want to get your partner responding well to imatinib, all nice and stable, before trying. 

It's a good deal more complicated if it's the woman taking imatinib. 

David.