Woman Gives Birth to a child After a Womb transplant

Woman in Sweden gives birth after a womb transplant It is a medical first, as a woman with a womb transplant gives birth in Sweden. The mother aged 36 years, had received a new uterus from a family friend. She had a premature delivery last month; however, the baby boy was completely healthy. The identities of the parents have not been revealed upon their request.

This experiment opens up an alternative for women who are unable to have children because of the loss of a uterus to cancer or because they lacked one since birth. However, before it was actually experimented, scientists wondered if a transplanted womb could nourish a fetus. Hence, many had already challenged the extreme step and questioned if it would be realistic to do so. Glenn Schattman, a fertility specialist at the Cornell University said that this process would remain highly uncommon because of the risks and complications attached to it. Moreover, the process is only advised when there is no other solution.

Dr. Brannstrom and his colleagues had transplanted wombs in nine different women over the last two years. Among these transplants, there were two forced organ removals too. Dr. Brannstrom then began to transfer embryos into seven other women, among which there were two pregnancies. Before these cases, there were two attempts of similar transplants - one in Saudi Arabia and the other one in Turkey.

However, no births were reported from either of the experiments. Specialists in France, Japan, Britain and Turkey had also worked on similar operations before, which involved wombs from dead women rather than from live donors.

The Swedish woman was missing a uterus since birth; however, she had healthy ovaries. She had received a uterus from a 61-year-old family friend who was going through a menopause after successfully giving birth to two children. According to Brannstrom, the major factor that defined the success of the transplant was the healthy womb.

After the transplant, the woman was given three different medicines to adjust to the new organ. After about six weeks, the recipient started to get her menstrual periods, which meant that the womb was healthy. After a year of tests and verification to make sure that the womb is healthy, the woman was impregnated by transferring an embryo into the womb which was created in the lab with the woman’s eggs and her husband’s sperm.

The growth of the child was completely normal and healthy in the womb until the 31 st week when the mother started to experience high-blood-pressure and pre-eclampsia. The baby was delivered with a cesarean section. The baby was completely normal and weighed 3.9 pounds,which was just right at that stage of pregnancy.

Related Article: http://www.researchomatic.com/New-Research/In-the-Womb-Then-Out-94571.html