Baby born from ovary frozen in mother's childhood

A woman in Belgium is the first in the world to
give birth to a baby using transplanted ovarian
tissue frozen when she was still a child,
doctors say.
The 27-year-old had an ovary removed at age
13, just before she began invasive treatment
for sickle cell anaemia.
Her remaining ovary failed following the
treatment, meaning she would have been
unlikely to conceive without the transplant.
Experts hope that this procedure could
eventually help other young patients.
The woman gave birth to a healthy boy in
November 2014, and details of the case were
published on Wednesday in the journal Human
Reproduction.
Bone marrow transplant
The woman, who has asked to remain
anonymous, was diagnosed with sickle cell
anaemia at the age of five.
She emigrated from the Republic of Congo to
Belgium where doctors decided her disease
was so severe that she needed a bone marrow
transplant using her brother's matching
tissue.
Scientists had frozen the woman's ovarian
tissue when she was 13 (file photo)
But before they could begin the bone marrow
transplant, they needed to give her
chemotherapy to disable her immune system
and stop it from rejecting the foreign tissue.
Chemotherapy can destroy the ovarian
function, so they removed her right ovary and
froze tissue fragments. At that time, she was
showing signs of puberty, but had not yet
started her periods. Her remaining ovary failed
at 15.
Ten years later, she decided she wanted to
have a baby, so doctors grafted four of her
thawed ovarian fragments onto her remaining
ovary and 11 fragments onto other sites in her
body.
Baby boy
The patient started menstruating
spontaneously five months later, and became
pregnant naturally at the age of 27.
The gynaecologist who led the treatment to
restore the patient's fertility, Dr Isabelle
Demeestere, told the BBC the patient was very
stressed during the procedure because it was
her only option to have a child, but that now
she "is of course very happy and is enjoying
her new life".
Dr Demeestere said it was now hoped the
procedure could help other young people,
especially given there is an increasing number
of long-term survivors of haematological
diseases diagnosed in childhood.
She said it was suitable for those who were at
high risk of ovarian failure, such as survivors
of treatment for lymphoma, leukaemia and
sarcoma.
She said thousands of people had now
undergone the procedure to freeze tissue and
in Dr Demeestere's clinic, 20% of them were
children.
"However, the success of this procedure
requires further investigation in very young
pre-pubertal girls, as our patient had already
started puberty even though she had not
started menstruating," she explained.
The risks involved
She also warned that it would only be suitable
for patients at high risk of ovarian failure,
because the procedure itself carries risks
such as damaging the removed healthy ovary
or reintroducing malignant cells at the time of
transplant.
Professor Adam Balen, chairman of the British
Fertility Society, welcomed the news.
"One would anticipate that young ovaries
should have lots of eggs in them, the concern
was whether those eggs might develop to
maturity, if the ovarian tissue was taken at
such a young age and frozen and then re-
implanted," he told the BBC.
"So, this is proof of that concept... it's very
important information."
About 40 babies have already been born
across the world using frozen ovarian tissue
taken from older women.