A 34-year-old infertile Ukrainian woman who has been trying to conceive for over ten years gives birth to a baby boy after going through a controversial 'three-parent baby' IVF treatment. This is the first in the world, and scientists helped the woman give birth.
Three-Parent Birth Was Designed To Remedy Infertility
The woman gave birth on January 5. The baby is "completely healthy" as shown on the initial tests. The new mother has undergone four IVF cycles previously, but all of them had been unsuccessful.
Scientists say that through the 'three-parent' IVF technique, infertile couples could still have kids, Daily Mail reported. This controversial method fertilised the infertile woman's eggs using her partner's sperm, and then their combined genes were transferred into a donor egg.
The baby has his parents' genetic identity, combined with small amounts of DNA from a second woman. This three-parent birth was designed to remedy infertility. Valery Zikin, head of the team at the Nadiya clinic in Kiev said that this treatment could help women whose embryos stopped growing before they can be implanted in a womb - which affects around one in 150 IVF patients.
A Slightly Different Technique Was Done In Mexico In 2016
This development is controversial because the clinic used the technique to treat an infertile couple, not a couple carrying a mitochondrial disease. Britain has passed laws which allows three-person IVF for couples with mitochondrial diseases, but no such baby has been born in the UK yet.
A slightly different technique was done in Mexico last year. The mother has genes for Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system, Telegraph reported. The baby was conceived from an egg which contains nuclear DNA from his mother and father, and mitochondrial DNA from a "second" mother - an unknown female donor.
