Life in the Fast Lane

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A recent discovery brings new hope for women with fertility problems linked to conditions such as PCOS or cancer. The first baby created from an egg that was matured in a lab, frozen, thawed and then fertilized, has been born in Canada — a 1 year-old named Carine, who is living a happy and healthy life.

Up to now it wasn’t known whether harvested eggs could sustain the freeze and thaw to be fertilized.

The advance spares women from taking risky fertility drugs that can cause a rare, yet deadly condition — ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS).

Scientists hope the process will be a viable option for women who become infertile due to certain types of cancer or polycystic ovary conditions in which liquid-filled sacs called cysts accumulate on the ovaries. Chemotherapy can cause infertility and, therefore, some women with cancer opt to have their eggs collected and frozen before they undergo cancer treatments.

“It has the potential to become one of the main options for fertility preservation.� said study team leader Hananel Holzer of the McGill Reproductive Center in Montreal, Canada.

BBC reports that of 20 women, 3 more have achieved pregnancy by this technique at the McGill Reproductive Center. The women involved had polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) — a condition for which ovaries are covered in cysts which can impair fertility and is linked with an increased risk of OHSS.

Eggs are collected before they have matured from the patients, then grown in the lab for 48 hours before freezing them. It takes days for the same maturation to occur in a woman’s body, Holzer said. The eggs were kept frozen for no more than a few months before they were thawed.

The eggs were fertilized with a form of sperm-injection and then transferred to the patients. Since in-vitro maturation is known to have low rates of implantation, the scientists transferred more than one egg to each patient.

The scientists credit their success to some ‘tweaks’ they made to the medium in which the immature eggs — or oocytes — were matured in the lab.

But not all women will want or be able to delay having chemotherapy to undergo ovarian stimulation. Some tumors such as breast cancers can grow if the woman takes drugs to stimulate the ovaries.

Dr Hananel Holzer and colleagues cautioned that their technique — in vitro maturation or IVM – had not been tried on women with cancer yet. He warned the research was still in its early stages.

Moderate or severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome can occur in 3 – 8% of IVF cycles.

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, of the Medical Research Council’s National Institute For Medical Research said, “Each step in this work had been achieved before, but this is the first time they have been successfully strung together. It is important as it will expand the choices available to women with diseases of the ovary or cancer and the clinicians treating them.”

Dr Laurence Shaw, spokesman for the British Fertility Society said, “These pregnancies are an exciting step. However, the pregnancy rate is very low and therefore large numbers of eggs would be needed.”

He stressed that it was a treatment suitable for people with fertility problems linked to conditions such as PCOS or cancer, and not for women who merely want to delay having a family.

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