Baby offers hope to cancer patients
Updated on 02 July 2007
A girl's birth has offered new hope to thousands of women being treated for cancer and other diseases who until now stood no chance of motherhood.
The baby, now one year old, was the first to be created from an egg matured in the laboratory and then frozen before being fertilised. Three other women have been made pregnant using the same procedure.
Previously egg freezing has always taken place after a woman has undergone hormonal stimulation to "ripen" the eggs in her ovaries. It was not known whether eggs collected when they are immature could survive freezing and thawing and produce a pregnancy. The new success means in future many more women undergoing treatment that destroys their eggs will be able to have their fertility preserved.
In many cases, cancer patients needing urgent therapy do not have enough time to undergo ovarian stimulation, or their condition might be made worse by treatment with hormones.
Other patients suffer from conditions, such as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), which may react dangerously to ovary stimulation. In the case of PCOS, which causes infertility, it can result in the potentially life-threatening condition ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS).
Dr Hananel Holzer, from McGill Reproductive Centre in Montreal, Canada, told a meeting of fertility experts: "Until now it was not known whether oocytes (eggs) collected from unstimulated ovaries, matured in-vitro (in the laboratory) and then vitrified, could survive thawing, be fertilised successfully, and result in a viable pregnancy after embryo transfer.
"We have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to do this and, so far, we have achieved four successful pregnancies, one of which has resulted in a live birth. The other three pregnancies are on-going. These results are preliminary and the pregnancy rate is probably associated with a learning curve; indeed three of the pregnancies were achieved in the last five patients."
The results were presented at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Lyon, France.
Dr Sarah Rawlings, head of policy at the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "New methods that may help women have children after breast cancer treatment are to be welcomed. However, this study is small and the research is still at an early stage and has not yet looked at breast cancer patients. We look forward to seeing how this study progresses."
These news feeds are provided by an independent third party and Channel 4 is not responsible or liable to you for the same.
