Posted on 05/30/2007 1:25:00 PM PDT by anymouse
An Italian doctor has reconstructed vaginas for two women born with a rare congenital deformation, using their own cells to build vaginal tissue in the lab for the first time.
Dr. Cinzia Marchese of Rome's Policlinico Umberto I hospital, giving details of the operations on Wednesday, told Reuters a 28-year-old woman who underwent the first such operation a year ago now has a healthy vagina.
"She has got married and is living a normal life," said Marchese, whose study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction.
The second operation was carried out on a 17-year-old girl on Tuesday and the first signs are that the cells taken by biopsy from the area where her vagina should grow and provide mucosal tissue.
Mucosal tissue is found inside the vagina, the mouth and elsewhere in the body and has important attributes distinct from ordinary skin.
The two women had a condition called Mayer-Von Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, or MRKHS for short, which affects an estimated one in 4,000 to 5,000 female infants.
Girls with the syndrome are born with no vagina. The patient often has a normal uterus, ovaries and external secondary sexual organs such as breasts, but cannot have sexual intercourse or give birth.
"Usually the syndrome is diagnosed when they are young and they try to have sexual intercourse for the first time and it hurts," said Marchese.
Often embarrassed to talk about it with their parents when they are young, MRKHS sufferers often "live the rest of their lives with no normal sexual life, even though they are normal women with normal feelings," she said.
So far, surgeons have been able to correct the condition by reconstructing a vagina out of grafted skin or from intestinal tissue, but the surgery is highly invasive, lengthy and painful. And it takes a long time to grow a normal mucosal wall.
Such women, if they have healthy ovaries, have been able to achieve pregnancy by artificial insemination but would then need a surrogate mother to carry the fertilized eggs and give birth.
"What we do is to take a little biopsy of 0.5 cm from the place the vagina should be, " Marchese said. They used an enzyme to break down the tissue and then let the immature cells, called stem cells, generate new, mucosal tissue on their own.
It took about 15 days to get a thick enough layer to transplant into the patients, Marchese said.
Marchese, a 47-year-old professor of clinical pathology and biotechnology, studied the use of stem cells to build sheets of skin in vitro to provide skin grafts for burn victims at Harvard Medical School with the technique's pioneer, Howard Green.
"When I came back to Italy I modified this technique for mucosal vagina tissue," she said, adding that its success could be good news for women with cancer and other vaginal complaints.
Let the jokes commence.
Truely "adult" stem cells.
This is probably a little too clinical for FR.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
Build a better vagina......
So it was named after a thrice married feminist?
More out-of-the-box thinking from modern medicine...
Sounds like a lot of second opinions.... Or attempted partners.
I built a spice rack.
This syndrome sounds like what I recall reading that the ‘Black Dahlia’ is supposed to have had.
I'm sure he's had to change his number because Rosie O'Donnell keeps calling to order take-out.
This definitely wouldn't happen in an Islamic Country. There, medical science seeks to remove parts of the female anatomy instead of regrow it.
You can finally get what you want.
I believe he’s now in negotiations with Lamborghini to have this installed as an option on their top of the line models.
Yeah...having no hole where there is supposed to be one might create a little issue...
It's amazing what kinds of things people can be born with. It's even more amazing what we as humans have been able to do to fix it!
I think so too. And I think it’s wonderful that a doctor made the effort to do research and make their lives normal.
Hell... I built a napkin-holder.
Somehow the headline reminded me of the opening TV sequence of the Six Million Dollar Man ...
Reminds me of that line from Field of Dreams.
“If you build it, .......”
In Before Thread Locked??
Could be more valuable than the Six Million Dollar Woman.
These docs could be very busy in S.F. I hear the city of S.F. pays for sex change operations for city employees.
And if you’re going from male to female, wouldn’t you want the very best “surgical technology” in this field?
Now they have to research the female to male operations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.