In what’s being described as a ‘revolutionary medical event,’ a baby in the U.K. has been born with DNA with three parents.
The little boy, who is now 6-months-old was born on April 6, 2016, and doctors are saying he appears healthy. The boy was conceived using a controversial technique meant to help people who carry genes for fatal and rare diseases. Lawmakers in the U.K. became the first to approve its use last year, and it is not currently approved in the U.S.
According to New Scientist, the baby’s parents were treated by U.S. fertility specialists in Mexico, where there are no laws prohibiting it. The boy’s mother carries a genetic mutation for Leigh syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that usually becomes apparent in the first year of life and is likely to be fatal. She also suffered four miscarriages and had two children who died from Leigh syndrome- one at age 6 and another at 8 months old.
The couple sought help from Dr. John Zhang, a reproductive endocrinologist at New Hope Fertility Center in New York City. He suggested to try the three-parent IVF technique to ensure that the disease mutation would not be passed along to the baby. “This is the very first time at least in human reproduction that the offspring are produced with three parties – one sperm and different parts of two eggs,” Zhang told CBS News. “So this is very revolutionary.”
The procedure, called spindle nuclear transfer involves removing the healthy nucleus from one of the mother’s eggs and transferring it to a donor egg which had its nucleus removed. The resulting egg with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor is then fertilized with the father’s sperm.
According to CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus: “There are thousands of kids born every year with mitochondrial defects and many of them succumb to this horrible disease. And there are also lots of women who can’t give birth because they know they have this particular defect. So it really does open the door of hope for them to have children of their own.” While safety concerns remain, this technique does has the potential to help many families in the future.
If the health of your baby was not at risk, would you consider conceiving your child using three parents?
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[Featured Image Credit: New Hope Fertility Center]
World’s First Child Is Born With DNA From Three Parents is an article from: LifeDaily