Azathioprine and Pregnancy

Hi zogo,
Hopefully I can help a bit. Please bear with the wordy-ness...
I am going through a similar scenario right now and I understand the difficulty and frustration in getting answers regarding men conceiving while on Azathioprine. We (my wife and I) are planning to start a family and have talked about me being on this medication with our GI, Family doc, Mother Risk and my wifes OB. We also have a scheduled appointment with the Fertility Guru of our area in september....Hopefully he will have a direct answer for us.
My GI said go for it (try to conceive), "it shouldn't be a problem" (the wife didn't like this answer). His reasoning was that he did not know of any studies or has not seen any issues personally with this combination.
Our family doc said it was "not a good idea" because it could possibly pass some immune system issues to the child through the dna of the sperm. He then brought us over to his computer to look up some published research studies from places that he trusts. This also was inconclusive as there were only a few recent legit studies that he could find, but they too had conflicting results.
My wife's OB said "no" flat out, but apparently he is not (has not been) a good doc and we don't really trust his answers.
We phoned the "Motherisk" phone line in Toronto for advice (they deal directly with high risk pregnancy and med interactions). They said that we would be fine, and that there are no additional risks while on this med. I believe their reasoning was mostly based on the fact that we are on a lower dose than those in the published studies (?) Sorry, can't really remember why exactly.
This brings us to the Fertility Guru. We have to wait another month and a half to find out. We are planning to take his word as bible, as there are really no other sure fire options after him.

I realize this doesn't answer your question, sorry, but maybe it will give you a bit more insight? One of the best places to look for research studies is pubmed.gov. Type in "azathioprine and sperm" or Imuran, or whatever....

Good luck, keep me informed too if you don't mind, it has been a roller-coaster for us and any additional info could help.

thanks.

Thanks NiRo, all info on this is much appreciated. Hopefully it will help others who read these threads in the future too.

Can you keep us updated on what you find out Zogoflax?

Thanks.

UPDATE

Just wanted to add my update to this thread to help any future people searching for answers regarding Aza, pred. and conception.

Without rehashing everything again, we had our appointment with the fertility doctor. His response was that there are never any sure fire promises in medicine and that it is our decision if we choose to take an educated risk and try to conceive, but he was relatively confident (along with all of our lab results) that things should be fine.

Fast forward to today, my wife is almost 8 weeks pregnant, all things seem normal (fingers crossed), including the first ultrasound, heartbeat and hormone levels. We are not out of the woods by any means, but we are very excited and cautiously optimistic...don't tell my parents though, they don't know yet!

Congratulations Kleetz, I am currently pregnant with my first and am 7 weeks but baby measures at 6 weeks 2 days so far. Hope all goes well with you guys!

I am in the same situation, a male on aza trying to have a child - my GI also said it was not anything to worry about.