Doctors have been granted approval to carry out the UK’s first 10 womb transplants, following the success of the procedure in Sweden.
Ethical approval has been granted for the transplants – as part of a clinical trial – and will launch in spring.
Around one in 7,000 women are born without a womb, while others lose their womb to cancer.
If the trial is successful, the first UK baby born from a womb transplant could arrive in late 2017 or 2018.
More than 100 women have already been identified as potential recipients of donor wombs.
Dr Richard Smith, a consultant gynaecologist at the Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in London who has been working on the project for 19 years, will lead the transplant team.
He said childlessness could be a “disaster” for couples, but the technique would offer hope to those whose only other option is surrogacy or adoption.
How would the procedure work?
- The operation takes around six hours, with the organ coming from a donor who has died but whose heart has been kept beating
- The recipient will need to take immunosuppressant drugs following the transplant and throughout any pregnancy to prevent the chance their body might reject the donor organ
- Once the donor womb is no longer needed, it can be removed by a team of surgeons. This would prevent the need for the woman to be on immunosuppressants for the rest of her life
- The operation is reported to cost about £40,000
Dr Smith told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the wombs would come from “heart beating” but “brain dead” donors.
“There is an innate desire in many women to carry their own baby. This procedure has the potential to satisfy that innate desire.
“Over the years I have quite a lot of crisis with this project… but when you meet the women who have been born without a uterus, or who have had their uterus removed for one reason or another, this is really heart-rending stuff and that is what has kept us going.
“There is no doubting that, for many couples, childlessness is a disaster.”
‘To carry my own child would be amazing’
Sophie, 30, is one of the women hoping to be selected as one of the first 10 recipients of a womb transplant.
She was 16 when she was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome – a condition which meant her womb did not develop – and told she would not be able to give birth.
Sophie is now preparing to marry her long-term partner Tilden Lamb next year and says the desire to have children had increased as she has grown older.
She says: “To be able to carry my own child would be amazing.”
The women who will be selected for the trial must all meet criteria, which include being 38 or under, having a long-term partner and being a healthy weight.
More than 300 women have approached the Womb Transplant UK team, of whom 104 meet the criteria.
In October last year a woman in Sweden became the first in the world to give birth to a baby after having a womb transplant, but from a living donor.
The 36-year-old, who was born without a uterus, gave birth by Caesarean section to a boy named Vincent after receiving a womb donated by a family friend.
A further three babies have since been born in Sweden using transplanted wombs from living donors.
The British Fertility Society welcomed this development.
Chairman, Prof Adam Balen, said: “This opens up the possibility for these women to carry their own pregnancy rather than rely upon IVF with their eggs and surrogacy.
“The UK team have been working on this for many years and so it is very exciting that they have been given the go ahead to move into clinical practice.”
Analysis: The difficult birth of womb transplants
By Smitha Mundasad, health reporter
Successful kidney, heart, liver and cornea transplants have been carried out for more than 50 years. But it has taken much longer for womb transplants to get even close to this – they are still very much at an experimental, trial stage.
There have been many issues to consider – including the safety of the patient receiving the transplant, questions over who should, could or would donate a womb and of course the health of the potential new life.
For many years researchers tried to perfect the technique on animals – from mice to monkeys.
The first well-documented human attempt took place in 2000 when doctors in Saudi Arabia transplanted a womb from a living donor to a young woman.
Initially it was hailed as a medical breakthrough but the success was short-lived.
Less than four months later the organ had to be removed when the transplanted tissue began to die as a result of a blood supply failure. The next challenge – a pregnancy – was never attempted.
Womb transplants have also been attempted in Turkey and other countries.
It was in 2014 that a major turning point came – in a medical first, a woman in Sweden gave birth to a baby boy using a transplanted womb.
While technology and skills have clearly progressed, the next question is how many people would need or want the procedure.
Estimates suggest one in 5,000 women are born with a condition called Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser syndrome for example.
People with this condition have no vagina, cervix or uterus.
In other cases women may have wombs removed after surgery for cancer, for example.
But not all these patients will be eligible. For the first few volunteers there is still likely to be a long and cautious road ahead.
Source: https://www.bbc.com
