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Earlier taken ovarian tissue helps woman to child
When cancer patients receive chemotherapy, treatment often makes women infertile. As a case from Belgium shows, the removal of ovarian tissue before puberty may be a way out of this problem.
Chemotherapy often makes you infertile
Chemotherapy in cancer patients often causes women to become infertile. A possible way out of this problem is reported by the news agency dpa: A woman in Belgium helped to get her baby's ovary taken from childhood many years later. Physicians report on this hitherto unique case in the journal "Human Reproduction". It is true that the procedure whereby women withdraw precautionary ovarian tissue after having undergone chemotherapy and are thus made fertile again is not new. Unusually, however, is the early removal of the tissue.
Image: nito / fotolia At the age of 13 years right ovary removed and frozen
According to the report, the patient had Sickle Cell Disease as a child, a hereditary red blood cell disorder that can be felt as early as one year old. Doctors in Belgium had their right ovary removed and frozen before the first menstrual period at the age of 13, as chemo-therapy became necessary in the context of a bone marrow transplant. It was known that the ovaries can be permanently damaged by this treatment. From the age of fifteen, the young patient had received constant hormone replacement therapy to start her cycle.
Years later, ovarian tissue was reinstated
The healthy woman then turned to the Erasmus Hospital of the Free University of Brussels at the age of 25 with a baby request. Thereafter, reproductive therapist Isabelle Demeestere and her team stopped hormone administration and reinstated parts of the previously harvested ovary. It is reported that they planted four fragments directly on the remaining ovary and eleven others in other places in the body. Egg production finally got going again and after five months menstruation started.
Wife gave birth to naturally begotten boy
Two years later, in November of last year, the woman gave birth to a naturally begotten boy. "This is a major breakthrough in this area because children are the patients who will benefit most from the procedure in the future," said Demeestere. However, it is still unclear to what extent ovarian tissue of younger girls - and not, as in this case, at the beginning of puberty - can be used successfully.
Successes also in Germany
Similar progress has been made in Germany in recent years in this area. Researchers at the University Hospital in Erlangen have been reporting for some time that they have successfully retransplanted ovarian tissue. Some of the patients also had children after that. However, there are still only a few cases in which this succeeded - even worldwide. In contrast to the current case from Belgium, the patients in this country had not yet had their ovarian tissue removed during childhood. (Ad)