Women gives birth after having ovary tissue removed and frozen during childhood

A woman had her ovarian tissue removed and frozen from her when she was just 13. She recently had given birth to a healthy baby after the doctors transplanted the ovarian tissue. This is the first time that ovarian tissue taken from a young girl led to a successful pregnancy. The woman, who wants to remain anonymous, developed sickle cell anemia when she was five years old. Her disease became so severe that doctors decided that she needed a bone marrow transplant. The patient received chemotherapy in order to keep her immune system from rejecting the transplant. Chemotherapy is known to destroying the functioning of the ovaries, and could prevent the girl from getting pregnant in the future.

They removed her right ovary, and froze the tissue fragments before she even had her period. She was showing signs of puberty, and her remaining ovary failed when she was 15. Ten years later, the woman decided to conceive. Doctors got the frozen tissue, and thawed some of it. They grafted four fragments onto her remaining ovary, and 11 onto the rest of her body. Two years after the transplant, the woman was able to naturally give birth to a healthy baby boy. “This is an important breakthrough in the field because children are the patients who are most likely to benefit from the procedure in the future,” said Dr Isabelle Demeestere, who led the treatment, in a statement.