For the first time, a woman has given birth to two children after her fertility was restored using transplants of ovarian tissue that had been removed and frozen during her cancer treatment and then restored once she was cured. The woman, Stinne Holm Bergholdt,  gave birth to a girl in February 2007 after receiving fertility treatment to help her become pregnant. But then, in 2008, she discovered she had conceived a second child naturally and gave birth to another girl in September 2008. Her doctor reported the case in the journal Human Reproduction.

 

“This is the first time in the world that a woman has had two children from separate pregnancies as a result of transplanting frozen/thawed ovarian tissue,” says Claus Yding Andersen, Bergholdt’s doctor and a professor of Human Reproductive Physiology at the University Hospital of Copenhagen and author of the article. “These results support cryopreservation of ovarian tissue as a valid method of fertility preservation and should encourage the development of this technique as a clinical procedure for girls and young women facing treatment that could damage their ovaries.”

 

So far, nine children have been born worldwide as a result of transplanting frozen/thawed ovarian tissue (including Bergholdt's two). Three have been born in Denmark after treatment carried out by Andersen.

 

Bergholdt, who is also one of the authors of the paper, was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma in 2004 when she was 27. Before she began chemotherapy, part of her right ovary was removed and frozen (her left ovary had been removed some years before because of a dermoid cyst, a type of benign ovarian tumor). Her cancer treatment was successful but, as expected, the drugs caused her to undergo menopause. In December 2005 six thin strips of ovarian tissue were transplanted back on to what remained of her right ovary. Her ovary began to function normally again and, after mild ovarian stimulation, she became pregnant and gave birth to her first daughter in February 2007.

 

In January 2008, she returned to Andersen's fertility clinic for additional IVF treatment so that she could conceive again. However, a pregnancy test revealed she was already pregnant naturally, and in September she gave birth to a second healthy girl.

 

“This showed that the original transplanted ovarian strips had continued to work for more than four years and that Mrs. Bergholdt still has the capacity to conceive and give birth to healthy children, says Andersen. “It is an amazing fact that these ovarian strips have been working for so long and it provides information on how powerful this technique can be.

Bergholdt has seven more ovarian strips in the clinic’s liquid nitrogen tank and may return, if she wishes, to have more tissue transplanted in order to maintain her ovarian function once the current strips stop working. As long as the tissue remains properly stored in liquid nitrogen, Andersen says it could remain functional for as long as 40 years, although he says this is not known for sure.