Cancer patient gives birth after ovarian transplant

AN Israeli woman who became infertile from cancer treatment has given birth to a healthy baby girl after an ovarian tissue transplant, the first clear example of the procedure's success.

The woman, who suffered from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, became completely infertile in her late 20s due to chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to treat her disease.

She gave birth on Monday at Israel's Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv.

"Her ovaries were damaged completely from the chemotherapy treatment and she would never have been able to have children... she was in permanent menopause," said Dr Joshua Dor, director of infertility.

Doctors at the centre extracted and froze tissue from her ovaries before she underwent a round of high dose chemotherapy treatment several years ago.

The tissue, regrafted onto her ovaries after she recovered from the disease, produced an egg that was fertilised through IVF.

Dr Dor said it was the first time that transplanted ovarian tissue in a woman who was completely infertile from chemotherapy had resulted in a birth. The case has featured on The New England Journal of Medicine's website.

"The potential is there. We still have to improve the technique," Dr Dor said.

A Belgian woman, who also had cancer, gave birth last year after her own frozen ovarian tissue was put back in her body but some experts said it was possible her existing ovaries had produced the egg.

Dr Dor's team will soon transplant ovarian tissue removed from an 18-year-old Israeli woman eight years ago before she underwent chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease.

The woman is now in her mid-20s and recently married. Ultimately the transplant procedure might be used to help older women who want to have children.

Unlike sperm, which remains viable after being kept frozen for extended periods, frozen ovaries are rarely able to produce an embryo. Freezing and transplanting ovarian tissue instead might make it easier for women to conceive in their late 30s and 40s when their fertility drops.

"If we succeeded in a patient who had two courses of chemotherapy and the ovaries were severely damaged and still she conceived, then I am sure that patients who didn't have any damage to their ovaries will be much more successful."

But the procedure is not without risks. Dr Dor and his team said there was a theoretical chance that malignant cells could enter the body along with the tissue.