Uterus transplants are go. A Swedish surgeon who successfully transplanted wombs into nine women is now helping some of them get pregnant via IVF.
鈥淲e are in the process of starting embryo transfer,鈥� says Mats Br盲nnstr枚m of the University of Gothenburg鈥檚 Sahlgrenska Hospital. If successful, it will be the first pregnancy in a transplanted womb. Since some of the uterus transplants are from mother to daughter, pregnancies could lead to a second generation being born from the same womb.
鈥淚 cannot give any specific information about the cases,鈥� says Br盲nnstr枚m, but he that most of the women are in their 30s and were either born without a uterus or had their own removed during cancer treatment.
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All the donors are alive and healthy, and all are related to the recipient to minimise the likelihood of rejection. At least two , the same wombs they grew in as embryos.
The transplant does not include ovaries or fallopian tubes so IVF is essential. 鈥淲e make sure the women are fertile and have embryos stored beforehand,鈥� Br盲nnstr枚m says.
Privileged condition
Br盲nnstr枚m told New Scientist in 2011 when he was planning the treatment that he would transplant the womb itself, plus all uterine arteries and veins to supply and drain blood from the organ. But he would not transplant nerves, which would greatly increase the complexity of the operation. He said that recipients would receive small doses of immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection, but hoped that the organ would be accepted more readily because pregnancy is itself an 鈥渋mmunoprivileged鈥� condition, where foreign material from the father is tolerated in the body.
If pregnancy and birth are successful, Br盲nnstr枚m will remove the womb, unless the recipient plans to have more babies.
Br盲nnstr枚m is not the first surgeon to transplant a womb. A Saudi woman received one in 2000, but surgeons said in 2002 that they鈥檇 had to remove it 99 days later because of life-threatening blood clots in associated blood vessels.
In preparations for womb transplants over the past decade, Br盲nnstr枚m and his colleagues have demonstrated successful births from such transplants in mice and sheep, and practiced the procedure on baboons.
He will divulge more details next month at a in Macau, China.
