First baby born using dead woman’s womb
Brazil
The first baby has been born using the transplanted womb from a dead woman, and British doctors say they are planning to replicate the procedure in the UK.
A team in Brazil transplanted the womb from a dead 45-year-old woman into an infertile 32-yearold recipient, who went on to have a healthy baby girl.
Infertility affects one in seven people in Britain, and while some problems can be solved through IVF, most women with womb issues have no alternative but adoption or surrogacy. The first womb transplant baby was born in Sweden in 2013, using her grandmother’s uterus, and since then there have been 10 other births globally. But donors are difficult to find and the surgical procedure to remove the womb from a living person can be dangerous.
The new breakthrough opens up the possibility of harvesting wombs from donor patients after death in the same way as other organs, ending the need for live donors.
‘‘The use of deceased donors could greatly broaden access to this treatment,’’ said lead researcher Dr Dani Ejzenberg, of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sao Paulo.
‘‘The first uterus transplants from live donors were a medical milestone, creating the possibility of childbirth for many infertile women. However, the need for a live donor is a major limitation as donors are rare, typically being willing and eligible family members or close friends.
‘‘The numbers of people willing and committed to donate organs upon their own deaths are far larger than those of live donors, offering a much wider potential donor population.’’
Richard Smith, consultant gynaecologist at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London, and clinical lead at Womb Transplant UK, said that his team hoped to start similar procedures.
Hundreds of women in Britain have already signed up to have womb transplants and doctors are now waiting for suitable tissue matches and donors to become available.
‘‘The UK womb transplant research team is absolutely delighted with the news from Brazil,’’ Smith said. ‘‘Womb transplant using organs from living donors and donors who have just died is a real option for some of the many women in the UK who don’t have a viable womb.’’
The Brazilian surgery was carried out on a woman who had already undergone IVF and had eight fertilised eggs frozen. She received the womb in September 2016 from a 45-year-old mother who had died from a stroke and consented for her uterus to be donated.
The operation took nearly 11 hours and the recipient needed five drugs to suppress her immune system sufficiently so her body would not reject the foreign tissue.
After checks showed that the womb was behaving normally, the frozen eggs were transplanted seven months after surgery, in April 2017, and a healthy baby girl was born 35 weeks later by caesarean section, weighing 2.72 kilograms (6lbs) and has continued to thrive. –