It’s an incredible fertility first: A 36-year-old Swedish woman gave birth to a healthy baby boy last month after undergoing a uterus transplant in 2013, according to a recent article in The Lancet. Born without a uterus, the woman received a donated womb from a friend who had two kids and had already gone through menopause.
The recipient is one of nine women who received womb transplants as part of a clinical trial to study the procedure, which had only been attempted two times before (one attempt failed, while the other took, though pregnancy attempts have not been successful, reported The Lancet). All of the women in the trial were suffering from a condition called absolute uterine factor infertility, which means they were either born without a uterus, had their uterus removed due to a disease such as cancer, or have a non-functioning uterus. It’s surprisingly not uncommon; an estimated 12,000 women in the U.K. alone have absolute uterine factor infertility, report the researchers.
Each woman in the trial received a uterus from a live donor in 2012 or 2013. After developing complications, two study participants had to have their transplants removed. However, the other seven began menstruating within three months of the surgery. Now, the first of the women has become a mom, proving the procedure can be a success.
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Of course, you don’t just have doctors pop in a uterus and then expect to be expecting. The recipient and her partner first underwent IVF, freezing the resulting embryos, before having the transplant. After the still-experimental operation was complete and the woman began having regular periods, the embryos were thawed and implanted into the donor womb. Three weeks later, a pregnancy test was positive, and the baby was born prematurely at 32 weeks, via cesarean section.
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His early arrival happened after his mom developed preeclampsia, a not-uncommon condition that the woman’s doctors don’t necessarily think had anything to do with the transplant or IVF. Both baby and mom made it through in great condition, with no complications.
While every birth is congratulations-worthy, this one is especially heralded because it’s such a major baby-making breakthrough. We're hoping that the rest of the women in the study give birth successfully and that more fertility breakthroughs can happen because of it. The researchers note that further studies are clearly needed to determine the efficiency and safety of this procedure as an infertility treatment. That said, this miracle baby is definitely something to get excited about. For more information on pregnancy and fertility, click here.
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