ABU DHABI // An Emirati has given birth after having her fertility restored by doctors using ovarian tissue removed when she was a child.
Moaza Al Matroushi, 24, from Dubai, is thought to be the first woman in the world to have a baby after having an ovary frozen before puberty.
“It’s like a miracle, we’ve been waiting so long for this result – a healthy baby,” she said after giving birth to a boy at Portland Hospital, London on Tuesday.
Her doctor, Sara Matthews, a consultant in gynaecology and fertility, was overjoyed for the family and delighted at the hope it offered to others.
"This is a huge step forward," she told the BBC. "We knew ovarian tissue transplantation works for older women, but we've never known if we could take tissue from a child, freeze it and make it work again."
Ms Al Matroushi was born with beta thalassaemia, a congenital blood disorder with a high incidence in the UAE.
When she was nine, she had a bone-marrow transplant at a hospital in London.
Before the transplant she required chemotherapy, which would have damaged her ovaries, so her mother had the idea to have her ovary removed and frozen. Fragments of her ovarian tissue were mixed with cryo-protective agents and slowly reduced in temperature to minus 196°C, before being stored under liquid nitrogen.
Last year, surgeons in Denmark transplanted five slivers of the ovarian tissue back into her body. Ms Al Matroushi had been going through the menopause but after the transplant, her hormone levels started returning to normal, she began ovulating and her fertility was restored.
To maximise the chances of having a baby, Ms Al Matroushi and her husband Ahmed underwent IVF treatment.
From the eight eggs collected, three embryos were produced, two of which were implanted this year.
“I always believed I would be a mum and that I would have a baby,” she said.
“I didn’t stop hoping and now I have this baby – it is a perfect feeling.”
She thanked her mother for having the idea to save ovarian tissue so she might be able to have a family.
Ms Al Matroushi still has one embryo in storage as well as two remaining pieces of ovarian tissue and said she planned to have another baby.
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