Mom to donate womb to daughter

Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:44PM

Eva Ottosson (L) and her daughter Sara Ottosson (R)

For the first time in the world, a 56-year-old mother is donating womb to her infertile daughter, who was born without reproductive organs.

As the world's first womb transplantation between mother and daughter, Eva Ottosson, 56, of Nottingham, England, is hoping to offer uterus to her 25-year-old daughter, Sara Ottosson, a biology teacher in Sweden.

Sara suffering from a congenital disorder called Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser syndrome (MRKH), which affects about one in every 5,000 women, was born without uterus and other parts of vagina.

The family hopes that the groundbreaking operation may give the young daughter an opportunity to become a mother herself.

Sara Ottosson is among seven patients that Swedish researchers are considering as possible candidates for the revolutionary uterus transplant.

Mats Brannstrom and his team in Gothenburg University are planning to carry out the complex operation as early as next spring after selecting the final candidate.

Brannstrom has worked on womb transplanting techniques for more than a decade. His team have transplanted wombs in mice, rats, sheep and pigs and hope that a similar operation may help thousands of women at childbearing age who are born without a womb or have had it removed because of disease.

The first uterus transplant was carried out on a 26-year-old Saudi woman in 2000. The donated organ, however, was removed after 99 days as a clot was formed in the blood vessel supplying the transplanted uterus.

Despite of having similar follow-up treatments, Brannstrom believes the uterus transplant procedure is much more complicated than a kidney, liver or heart transplant.

"The difficulty with it is avoiding hemorrhage and making sure you have long enough blood vessels to connect the womb," he noted.

The procedure consists of a four-hour surgery for removing Eva's uterine. Sara should take anti-rejection medication to ensure her body would accept the organ over the course of a year, the lead surgeon added.

Sara's own eggs would after that be fertilized by her partner's sperm using in vitro fertilization (IVF), and would then be implanted into the womb.

SJM/PKH