Cancer Patients Can Also Become Mothers

A new method developed by researchers helps women whose ovaries have been struck by cancer to have babies.

Pascal Piver, who manages the in vitro fertilisation centre at Limoges University Hospital in France, described a new, two-step method of ovarian transplant which has produced excellent results in women whose ovaries have been frozen because of cancer treatment.

He said that his team's technique worked to restore ovarian function quickly and already one patient from his clinic had had a baby and another had become pregnant.

"On June 22, a baby girl was born to a mother who had been menopausal for two years as a result of treatment for sickle cell anaemia.”

"After transplanting her own ovarian tissue she started ovulating in four months and became pregnant naturally six months after transplantation. Both mother and baby are doing well," he said.

"In order for a woman to become pregnant, the ovaries need to be responsive to the action of hormones that cause them to release eggs each month," he explained.

"If the blood supply to the ovaries is insufficient, this will not happen, even though the transplant may look as though it has been successful."

To overcome this problem they carried out a two-stage procedure, first grafting small pieces of the frozen ovarian tissue in the ovarian and peritoneal (transparent membrane that lines the abdominal cavity in mammals) areas three days before the real transplant.

The graft encourages the growth of blood vessels and paves the way for the ovary to fully function in a shorter time scale than would be possible if all the tissue were to be transplanted at the same time.

The procedure has been outlined at the 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.