First baby born using 3-parent fertility technique
This is the first baby to be born using a particular “3-parent-baby” technique to treat infertility.
The girl was born on 5 January in a fertility clinic in Kiev, Ukraine. “With the help of this method, a 34-year-old woman who had suffered from infertility for more than 15 years gave birth to a healthy baby that’s genetically her own,” said a statement from the Nadiya clinic.
The clinic’s director, Valery Zukin, and his team used a mitochondrial transfer technique that creates embryos that carry the chromosomes of two parents, but the mitochondrial DNA of a donor.
This technique has been approved in the UK as a way to bypass a baby inheriting harmful mitochondrial diseases, but Zukin’s team used the method to treat embryo arrest – a condition in which fertilised eggs stop growing after generating only a few cells.
The idea is that there are factors within a cell that can help or hinder fertility – such as enzymes that help cells grow and divide. By placing a pronucleus from the mother – which contains her chromosomal DNA plus that of the father – into the egg of a donor, the team may have found a way to get around whatever was causing the early arrest.
Testing has revealed that the baby does indeed have DNA from both her parents, and the donor egg, says the clinic.
“It’s good news the child seems healthy, and that the procedure in this case seems safe, at least until birth,” says Bert Smeets, a fertility expert at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. This may be a treatment that can treat various infertility problems caused by issues with an egg’s cytoplasm, but it won’t be the solution for all female fertility problems, he says.
But there are questions over whether it’s appropriate to use this technique – which carries unknown risks – to treat infertility, says Smeets.
The baby is the second born using this particular three-parent-baby technique. The first, born in Mexico last year, was made using this method to avoid it inheriting a serious hereditary disease called Leigh Syndrome.
While the UK was the first country to legally approve the use of this technique, it has not been tried in the UK yet. The Nadiya clinic is expecting a second baby in March.
Read more: Exclusive: Mexico clinic plans 20 ‘three-parent’ babies in 2017
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