Frozen ovary a success
2004-06-30 14:10
Berlin - A Belgian doctor announced on Wednesday that, for the first time, a woman had become pregnant after her ovary had been removed, frozen, thawed and then re-implanted.
The young woman, who has not been identified, is scheduled to give birth "in late September, early October," researcher Marie-Madeleine Dolmans of Brussels' Catholic University of Louvain announced at an international fertility conference.
The research is significant, because it boosts hopes of restoring the fertility of cancer patients of child-bearing age who face ovary-damaging therapy.
More distantly, it also sketches the vision of postponing the menopause - of allowing women to delay when they want to have children, and possibly becoming a mother in their 50s and even later.
Dolmans said the patient was aged 25 when the ovary was removed in 1997 ahead of chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease.
The ovary was frozen, and after the woman was declared cancer-free, the organ was thawed out and re-implanted in 2003.
Four months later, the patient started to menstruate and hormone tests showed that the ovary was beginning to function again.
The woman has become pregnant naturally, without using in-vitro or other fertilisation techniques, Dolmans said.
Previous research in this field has resulted in early-stage embryos - just two or four cells - but not resulted in any pregnancy.
The research was announced at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.