Stop menopause with ovary transplants

Women may soon decide about when to have children without worrying about the so-called biological clock ticking away, say scientists who claim that they can now stop menopause with ovary transplants.

“It is possible to remove a small piece of ovarian tissue, freeze it, and when the woman reaches menopause around the age of 51, we could transplant that tissue back and she might not ever have to go through menopause,” Sherman Silber, the lead scientist at Infertility Centre of St Louis, said.

The latest breakthrough came after three women conceived naturally and gave birth to seven babies after receiving ovary transplants, the Daily Mail reported.

One of the women had her tissue frozen and inserted back into her at a later date, while the other two received ovaries extracted from an identical twin to prevent rejection.

The results showed that transplanted ovaries could remain effective for at least seven years and raise the possibility of being able to stop the menopause and allow women to delay motherhood.

Stinne Holm Bergholt, 35, went on to give birth to three babies after chemotherapy for bone cancer left her infertile. Before the chemotherapy, however, she had one of her ovaries taken out and transplanted back in afterwards.

Holm Bergholt, a Danish doctor, told ‘The Sunday Times’: “Seven years back, I had just finished chemotherapy and my body was very weak. Now I have three children and I am living a normal life. It’s amazing.”

Gedis Grudzinskas, a consultant gynaecologist in London, added: “Women will have so much choice about when and how to have children, independent of their age...”
The findings are to be published in the Reproductive Biomedicine Online journal.