The first British baby with DNA (genetic material) from three people was born after doctors carried out a groundbreaking in vitro fertilization procedure that aims to prevent children from inheriting incurable diseases.
The unprecedented feat was reported in the online edition of The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday and is cited by international news agencies.
The technique, known as mitochondrial donation treatment and which led to the birth of the world’s first baby in Mexico in 2016 with this procedure, uses egg tissue from healthy donors to create embryos free of harmful genetic mutations that mothers are likely to pass on to their their children. children
According to the Guardian article, the embryos thus generated with this technique combine the genetic material of the sperm and egg of the biological parents with that of the healthy mitochondria (cell organelles) of the donor egg.
In this way, the baby that is born has DNA (more than 99.8%) from the mother and father, as always, but also a small amount of genetic material – about 37 genes – from a donor.
The British authority on fertilization and human embryology, quoted by the same newspaper, indicated, without specifying, citing confidentiality reasons, that the number of babies born thanks to the same ‘in vitro’ fertilization technique was “less than five”. .
UK law was changed in 2015 to allow mitochondrial donation treatment, with the Newcastle Fertility Center being the only facility in the country licensed to do so.
According to The Guardian, the regulator has approved this treatment for at least 30 cases.
The procedure helps women with mitochondria with harmful genetic mutations to have children without the risk of transmitting disease to them (mitochondria are inherited from mothers by all people).
The father’s sperm is used to fertilize eggs from the affected mother and a healthy donor. The nuclear genetic material from the donor egg is then removed and replaced with that of the couple’s fertilized egg, which carries DNA from both parents and the donor’s healthy mitochondria instead of the mother’s defective mitochondria.
This egg is then transplanted into the mother’s uterus. According to studies, the technique is not without risk: a small number of abnormal mitochondria that are inevitably transferred from the mother’s egg to the donor’s egg can multiply when the baby is in the mother’s womb, causing disease in the child. .
In 2016, an American doctor announced the birth, in Mexico, of the first baby generated with mitochondrial donation.
Prior to the doctor’s treatment, the baby’s mother had four miscarriages and two children who passed away at the age of eight months and six years.
The woman had mitochondria with genetic mutations that cause Leigh Syndrome, a rare inherited neurodegenerative disease that affects the central nervous system and can be fatal.
Source: TSF
