A woman who was unable to have children has given birth to a son after doctors used frozen ovarian tissue that had been removed before her tenth birthday to restore her fertility.
The world’s first baby to be conceived from tissue removed before puberty was delivered by doctors at the Portland Hospital in London.
The mother, Mooza Al Matrooshi, 24, was born with beta thalassaemia, an inherited blood disorder that can be fatal if left untreated. When she was nine years old, her right ovary was removed by surgeons in Leeds and frozen to protect it from the damage that would be caused by the chemotherapy she needed.
Mrs Matrooshi, originally from Dubai, had to wait 15 years after the surgery before becoming the first woman to give birth using an ovary that was frozen at such a young age.
“It’s like a miracle,” she told the BBC. “We’ve been waiting so long for this result — a healthy baby.”
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Dr Sara Matthews, a consultant gynaecologist at the hospital who delivered the baby, said that the procedure offered new hope to young cancer patients who undergo harsh fertility damaging treatments.
“This is a huge step forward,” she said. “We know that ovarian tissue transplantation works for older women but we’ve never known if we could take tissue from a child, freeze it and make it work again.” When an ovary is removed, tissue fragments are mixed with protective chemicals, stored in liquid nitrogen and gradually reduced in temperature below minus 196C.
Mrs Matrooshi had several fragments of this tissue surgically implanted last year on to her failed left ovary and one side of her uterus. She and her husband then underwent IVF treatment and two fertilised eggs were implanted in her womb earlier this year.
Before the treatment, Mrs Matrooshi had been experiencing early menopause due to the hormonal imbalance resulting from having had her ovary removed.
Dr Matthews said: “Within three months of re-implanting her ovarian tissue, Mooza went from being menopausal to having regular periods again. She basically became a normal woman in her 20s with normal ovary function.”
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Researchers at the University of Leeds, where Mrs Matrooshi had her ovary removed, were involved in the world’s first transplant of frozen ovarian tissue in 1999.
Professor Helen Picton, head of reproduction and early development at the university said that in Europe alone, several thousand girls and young women now had frozen ovarian tissue in storage.
Last year a 28-year-old woman in Belgium became the first to give birth using frozen ovary tissue removed as a teenager, at the age of 13.
Earlier this year a cancer patient from Edinburgh became the first British woman to give birth after a transplant of her frozen ovary tissue. The mother, who conceived naturally, wished to remain anonymous.
About 1,600 children in Britain are diagnosed with cancer each year and treatment can often destroy their fertility. Beta thalassaemia mainly affects people of Mediterranean, South Asian, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern origin. People with the condition produce little or no haemoglobin, reducing the amount of oxygen carried around the body by red blood cells. This can make patients very anaemic.
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Mrs Matrooshi, who still has an embryo and two conserved pieces of ovarian tissue in storage, hopes to have another child. “I always believed that I would have a baby,” she said. “I didn’t stop hoping and now I have this baby — it is a perfect feeling.”