A WOMAN is bidding to become the first to have a baby after an ovary frozen
when she was a child was implanted back inside her.
The UK case involves a young woman who had her ovary removed and frozen at the
age of eight.
If successful, Moaza Alnatrooshi will be the very first to fall pregnant after
having an ovary frozen before the onset of puberty.
The breakthrough would also give hope to thousands of others who are unable to
conceive because their reproductive organs have been damaged by treatment
for cancer and other diseases.
Last year medics in Belgium revealed they had managed to restore the fertility
of a young women using frozen ovary tissue which had been removed when she
was 13.
In that case, the 28 year old woman, whose tissue was taken and frozen before
she had chemotherapy as a teenager, gave birth to a healthy baby boy in
November 2014.
In the IVA procedure, ovarian tissue is treated to stimulate growth, then
re-implanted into the body
But the current case is the first to involve a female patient whose ovaries
were taken long before puberty began.
Moaza, 23, had her ovaries removed because she was being treated for beta
thalassaemia, an inherited blood disorder, at Great Ormond Street Hospital
in London.
She had chemotherapy, which damages the ovaries, before a bone marrow
transplant.
Specialists in freezing techniques were able to preserve the organ, in the
hope it would allow her to one day have a family.
The ovary remained frozen until last year when Mrs Alnatrooshi’s doctor, Sara
Matthews, a gynaecologist at the Portland Hospital in London, arranged for
it to be sent to Denmark, where the transplant took place.
The patient and her husband, Ahmed, then underwent IVF to increase their
chances of pregnancy.
Three embryos have been produced – one of which is expected to be implanted
next month.
Mrs Alnatrooshi, who is from Dubai but is staying in Britain for her
treatment, told the Sunday Times: “My mum did this huge thing for me
which is that she froze my ovary and saved it for me until I grew up and
used it.
“I want to believe I will be pregnant. I cannot wait for that day. I
would like to say to all women that they have got to have hope.”
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Dr Matthews said the breakthrough could help many more women in future.
“This allows young girls who develop cancer or have other conditions that
require chemotherapy, like beta thalassaemia, to have children where the
vast majority, over 90 per cent would not be able to have their own children,”
she said.
“There is no other way at the moment to do it. You cannot grow eggs. You
can’t do IVF [before the chemotherapy] because they haven’t gone through
puberty. It is the only option for them and we have been able to prove that,
in practice, it works.”