Women who had lost their ovaries and who underwent surgery due to some disease may soon give birth naturally with a new fertility method discovered. A woman (a test subject) in London successfully gave a healthy birth to a child despite having had doctors re-implanted her ovary that was removed at the age of nine.
Doctors allowed the fertility treatment method to restore the woman's fertility using frozen ovarian tissue sample. Health experts label the 24-year-old patient Moaza Al Matrooshi as the first in science breakthrough to have a baby after having an ovary frozen before sexual maturity.
"It's like a miracle," Al Matrooshi told the BBC. "We've been waiting so long for this result - a healthy baby."
Dr. Sara Matthews, who handled the patient, said the fertility treatment has great potential to help other women. She describes Al Matrooshi's case as "a huge step forward" as it proves younger women could also benefit from the treatment, especially those at risk to lose fertility due to cancer, blood, or immune disorders.
"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," Matthews added.
How The New Fertility Treatment Method Works
Moaza Al Matrooshi, from Dubai, agonized beta thalassemia as early as young age. It's a blood illness that could be deadly if left untreated. The disease requires chemotherapy, which damages the ovaries at the same time. This then led Al Matrooshi and her family to agree to remove and freeze her right ovary before the treatment.
Doctors placed an agent in her ovarian tissue in a liquid nitrogen with cryoprotective to preserve it. In 2015, surgeons in Denmark removed the tissue back into her body. Al Matrooshi prior to the fertility treatment had been going through the menopause.
But, doctors found that the transplanted tissue benefited her because her hormone levels returned to normal, which allowed her to regain back her fertility. She also undertook IVF treatment to take full advantage of chances of having a child.
"Within three months of re-implanting her ovarian tissue, Moaza went from being menopausal to having regular periods again," said Matthews, who conducted the fertility treatment. "She basically became a normal woman in her 20s with normal ovary function."
