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PETBioNewsNewsGo to work on an egg

BioNews

Go to work on an egg

Published 9 June 2009 posted in News and appears in BioNews 179

Author

BioNews

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.

The birth of the first baby conceived using a woman's own egg that had been frozen has been announced in the UK. Emily Perry, who is now three months old, was born from an egg that had been frozen and then thawed before fertilisation. This is the first time that...

The birth of the first baby conceived using a woman's own egg that had been frozen has been announced in the UK. Emily Perry, who is now three months old, was born from an egg that had been frozen and then thawed before fertilisation.


This is the first time that such a technique has been successful in the UK, although egg freezing in Singapore and Australia over a decade ago, but with very low success rates, resulting in the abandonment of the projects. It has always proved difficult to freeze and thaw a human egg, due to its high water content and the subsequent formation of ice crystals which cause damage to it. The procedure has been used more recently and more successfully in Italy, following the development of a new freezing and thawing protocol by Australian and Italian scientists.


Helen Perry, the baby's 36-year-old mother, has blocked fallopian tubes, so she and her husband, Lee, decided to use IVF to have a baby. But the drugs that were used to induce egg production caused Mrs Perry's ovaries to overreact. While her body recovered from this, Ms Perry had her eggs frozen, using a new kind of 'antifreeze' that the clinic had developed. The option of freezing embryos was not considered as the couple are Jehovah's witnesses and did not want to 'waste' any embryos.


Dr Gillian Lockwood of Midland Fertility Services, Birmingham, where the treatment was given, said that as well as being used to delay children because of cancer or other illnesses, egg freezing would 'work just as well for the Bridget Jones generation who want to freeze their eggs to keep their reproductive options open'.

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Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
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9 June 2009 • 2 minutes read

New technique may improve success of egg freezing

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Scientists from the University of Michigan, US, have developed a new egg freezing technique that may improve the chances of women who want to have children following treatment for cancer. Treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy can render a woman infertile, so researchers have been looking at ways to preserve...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts equipment used for embryo biopsy.
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9 June 2009 • 2 minutes read

Egg freezing treatment shows promise

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Italian researchers say that they have achieved 13 births using eggs that had been frozen and thawed before being fertilised and implanted into a woman. According to the researchers, who publish their findings in the September edition of the journal Fertility and Sterility, the study indicates that the promise of...

Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
CC0 1.0
Image by Alan Handyside via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts a human egg soon after fertilisation, with the two parental pronuclei clearly visible.
News
9 June 2009 • 1 minute read

First baby from frozen egg in China

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China's first IVF baby to be conceived using a frozen human egg was born at the end of April this year. Newspapers in the country have heralded the birth as the 'arrival of a technology that was introduced abroad only three years ago'. The first UK birth following the use...

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