PARIS, Sept 24: In a world-first achievement that may drive back the limits of human fertility, a woman has given birth after her ovarian tissue was removed, frozen, thawed and then reimplanted, doctors announced on Friday.
More than seven years after slices of ovary were placed in storage to give her the chance of motherhood after cancer therapy, 32-year-old Belgian woman Ouarda Touirat gave birth to a healthy 3.72-kilo (8.2-pound) girl, they said.
The child, born late Thursday at the Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc in Brussels, has been named Tamara, the clinic told AFP. It is the first time that a child has been born to a woman whose ovarian tissue has been frozen and later reimplanted.
The team, led by Jacques Donnez, a professor at the city's Catholic University of Louvain, suggest the technique could avert the nightmare of early menopause for women like Touirat, who had been diagnosed with advanced cancer at the age of only 25.
To save her life, she needed to take powerful tumour-suppressing drugs and radiation therapy, both of which risked destroying her ovaries. "Before you undergo chemotherapy, if you have a piece of ovary removed and frozen for 10, 15 years, at least you know there is a potential [for motherhood] somewhere,"Donnez told reporters.
In 1997, Touirat was diagnosed with stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma - cancer of the lymph system that had spread to other organs. Five tissue samples, about 12-15mm (0.5-0.6 of an inch) long and 5 mm (0.2 of an inch) wide, were taken from her left ovary.
Four of the samples were cut into 70 small cubes while the other was left uncut; all were frozen in liquid nitrogen at -196 C (-320 F). Touirat then underwent a powerful course of seven anti-cancer drugs over six months which caused her periods to end, and this was followed by a course of radiotherapy. Tests confirmed that both her ovaries had failed.
In 2003, after her recovery from cancer, the stored tissue was thawed and reimplanted in the pelvic region, tucked into a niche next to the right ovary, which like the remains of the left ovary had atrophied.
A week later, a network of tiny blood vessels could be seen around the implanted tissue, a good sign that it had been accepted. Five months later, the patient started to resume her menstrual cycle and after 11 months she conceived. She became pregnant by natural means, not by IVF, said Donnez. -AFP