Posted on 11/09/2006 5:31:42 AM PST by Mrs Ivan
The world's first successful womb transplant will take place next year, doctors say today.
Dr Giuseppe Del Priore, from New York Downtown Hospital, has been given the go-ahead to carry out the operation and claims to have found a number of potential donors.
Dr Del Priore said that while the would-be recipient would have to go through months of counselling and tests, if the right patient was identified today he expected to be able to carry out the procedure next year.
If the operation can be perfected for humans, it could help thousands of women with Rokitansky syndrome, a rare congenital condition that affects one in 5,000 women in which the uterus develops abnormally but the ovaries still function.
Around 200 British women every year who attempt to have their own biological children using surrogate mothers would be given the chance to give birth naturally.
Last month Dr Del Priore's team performed a womb transplant in a rhesus monkey. Because the wrong dose of anti-clotting drugs was used the animal was put down after 20 hours.
However Dr Del Priore said the operation was a success because blood flow was successfully established in the recipient.
Last night he said he did not believe it was necessary to achieve a pregnancy in a non-human primate that had had a womb transplant before moving on to a human patient.
However Dr Mats Brannstrom, from Gothenburg University in Sweden, who has been working on womb transplants in sheep, told New Scientist magazine: "We have to do a lot more animal studies before we go on to humans."
The only previous attempted human womb transplant was announced in 2002 by a team in Saudi Arabia where surrogacy is illegal.
They claimed to have transplanted the womb of a 46-year-old post-menopausal woman who had to have a hysterectomy to a 26-year-old woman who had lost her uterus because of excessive bleeding after childbirth.
The recipient was said to have had two menstrual periods, but a clot developed in a blood vessel supplying the uterus and the organ had to be removed.
Scientists have previously carried out successful womb transplants in mice, sheep and dogs.
Dr Del Priore said: "It is cautionary approval but it is approval. If the right patient shows up the [hospital] independent review board has stated we could go-ahead.
"Technically we are capable of doing it. If we had everything in order we could do it tomorrow."
Any would-be patient would have to go through a series of obstacles including seeing a psychologist, reconsidering adoption and surrogacy, seeing a specialist to confirm they are otherwise fertile, try IVF, as well as seeing a pregnancy risk specialist and transplant support team.
The organ is likely to be sourced from a dead donor who had previously had a child. They would have to have the same blood group and be immunologically matched.
Hopefully he means in a female, at least. I can see where this is leading...
GAK, this guy is asking for nothing but trouble.
In fact, has he even done it in a cat, dog, or mouse?
Oddly enough, this will outrage many of the embryonic stem cell research proponents. More seriously.....
If this could be done, how long would the recipient need to be on anti-rejection drugs and what effect do they have on a fetus?
That was what I was thinking, too.
What a bunch of crapola! He gets his 15 minutes of fame and the instant gratification generation gets another item to wish for on their list.
No doubt some poor pitiful self centered women with regretted hysterectomys will line up to become glorified mothers.
This could lead to bad places, it's true. That said, I'm bowled over at the potential for learning about rejection in these patients. Running maternal/foetal anergy in a transplanted uterus... the potential for learning about immune tolerance is incredible. Enough knowledge in that direction and stem cell therapy will lose all the media attention it's had for the last three years.
'Womb swapping' as an alternative to abortion?
Well then the woman can come down with depression and go and have a late term abortion because of her depression
yeah, yean, yeah! God forbid we should not have our every wish fullfilled. Big boobs, no wrinkles, no penile dysfunction, hair transplant, surrogate wombs, stem cell wonders, cloning. Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie!
Why not make a committment to an abandoned welfare child? Save a child who is already here? Wanting and loving a child should go beyond genetics.
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