Woman Becomes First to Give Birth through Womb Transplant
Woman Becomes First to Give Birth through Womb Transplant – A Swedish woman became the first to give birth to a baby through a transplanted donor uterus. Previous attempts in Turkey and Saudi Arabia failed.
In what’s a first in the medical world, a woman who was given a womb transplant, successfully gave birth to a baby boy. According to the report which appeared in the medical journal, The Lancet, the 36-year-old Swedish mother received a donated uterus from a 61-year-old family friend, who had undergone menopause seven years earlier. The uterus transplant was performed at the University of Gotenburg in Sweden. A year later, doctors implanted a frozen embryo. It was fertilized in-vitro, with one of the mother’s eggs and the father’s sperm.
According to local reports, last month, the baby was successfully delivered via a cesarean section at 31 weeks of the mother’s pregnancy. According to a report in Bloomberg, the woman was born with Rokitansky syndrome, a rare condition which affects about 1 in 4,500 women. The result is a missing uterus.
The Telegraph quotes the baby’s father as saying, “he’s no different from any other child. He’ll have a good story to tell.”
Speaking to BBC, the German and French fertility society said, “The scale of it feels a bit like [in vitro fertilization]. It feels like a step change. The question is, can it be done repeatedly, reliably, and safely.”
Transplanting a uterus is still a very rare procedure, with only a few attempts being made in the past. None of those resulted in a live birth either. The first attempt was in Saudi Arabia in 2000. According to New Scientist, it was considered a partial success because the womb had to be removed after 99 days. Another, done in Turkey in 2011 was more successful, with the uterus eventually becoming fully functional. The Daily Mail said the woman attempted to give birth using in-vitro fertilization but experienced a miscarriage.
The Swedish parents will reportedly soon be able to decide whether or not they want to try for a second child or have the womb removed due to the negative long-term effects of the drugs being used to keep it in place.
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