Eight healthy babies were born in the UK with the help of a new IVF technique that successfully reduced their risk of inheriting genetic diseases of their mothers, according to the results of a world-first test on Wednesday.
The findings were praised as a breakthrough, which calls the hope that women with mutations in their mitochondrial DNA could ever have children without passing on to their children.
One in 5,000 births is influenced by mitochondrial diseases that cannot be treated, and include symptoms such as reduced vision, diabetes and muscle waste.
In 2015, Great Britain was the first country to approve an in-vitro fertilizer (IVF) that uses a small amount of healthy mitochondrial DNA from the egg of a donor, along with the egg of the mother and sperm of the father.
Some have called the result of this process “three-parents babies”, although researchers have reduced this period because only about 0.1% of the DNA of the newborn comes from the donor.
The results of the long -awaited British test were published in various articles in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Important reproductive option
Of the 22 women to undergo the treatment in the Newcastle Fertility Center in Noordoost -England, eight babies were born. The four boys and four girls now range from less than six months to more than two years old.
According to the study, the amount of mutated mitochondrial DNA-that disease causes disease reduced by 95% -100% in six of the babies.
For the other two newborns, the amount fell by 77%-88%, which is lower than the reach that causes disease.
This indicates that the technology was “effective in reducing the transmission” of diseases between mother and child, one of the studies said.
The eight children are currently healthy, although they had a disruption of the rhythm of their heart, which was successfully treated, the researchers said.
Their health will be followed in the coming years to see if problems arise.
Nils-Goran Larsson, a Swedish reproductive expert who is not involved in the research, greeted the “breakthrough”.
The new technology offers a “very important reproductive option” for families affected by “devastating” mitochondrial diseases, he added.
Ethical assessment
Mitochondrial donation remains controversial and is not approved in many countries, including the United States and France.
Religious leaders have opposed the procedure because it means the destruction of human embryos. Other opponents have expressed fears that it can free up the way for genetically manipulated “designer babies”.
An ethical evaluation carried out by the Independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics in the UK was “instrumental” when conducting the new investigation, said Danielle Hamm director on Wednesday.
Peter Thompson, head of the British fertilization and embryology authority of the UK, which approved the procedure, said that only people with a “very high risk” of passing on a mitochondrial disease are eligible for treatment.
Ethical concerns have also been discussed about the use of mitochondrial donation for infertility in Greece and Ukraine.
French mitochondrial disease specialist Julie Stefann told AFP That “it is a matter of the risk-benefit ratio: the benefit is clear for a mitochondrial disease”.
“It has not been proven in the context of infertility,” she added.
Reproductive genetics expert Dagan Wells from Oxford University noted that “some scientists will be a bit disappointed that so far has only led to the birth of eight children”.
Among the children who are carefully checked are three who showed some signs of what is known as “reversal”, which is still understood little.
It is “a phenomenon in which therapy initially succeeds in producing an embryo with very little defective mitochondria, but by the time the child is born, the share of abnormal mitochondria in his cells has increased considerably,” he explained.
