Pioneering: Derya Sert, 22, from Anamur in Southern Turkey, was born without a womb
A Turkish housewife has become the first woman in the world to fall pregnant after undergoing a womb transplant.
Married Derya Sert, 22, conceived after undergoing IVF treatment in a world first that will bring hope to thousands of British women without uteri.
Mrs Sert has already made medical history once when she became the first woman to have a successful womb transplant in August 2011, receiving a new uterus from a dead donor.
Doctors waited 18 months to start fertility treatment and last week implanted an embryo – one of Mrs Sert’s eggs fertilised with her husband’s sperm – into her new womb.
Professor Mustafa Ünal, chief physician at Akdeniz University where the procedure was carried out, said: 'Two weeks after we implanted Mrs Sert with a fertilised embryo, test results are consistent with early pregnancy.
'The patient's health is good. We will continue to announce any further developments.'
that blood tests would reveal within days whether the embryo would lead to a pregnancy.
Before the news was announced, British doctors said that if the pregnancy was successful, it could mean similar transplants being carried out in the UK within a couple of years.
There are 15,000 women in Britain who were born without a womb or who have had theirs removed for medical reasons.
Richard Smith, a consultant at Imperial College London, welcomed the news of the embryo implantation.
He has already trialled womb transplants on rabbits and will move on to human transplants if he is given ethical approval.
Mrs Sert, who is married to 35-year-old Mustafa, has said previously: ‘If I had a magic wand, I would want to be pregnant now. I just want to hold my baby in my arms, to be a mother.’
Those in favour of womb transplants argue it is the only way to meet the desperate desire of many of these women to ‘carry’ their own baby.
This need cannot be met if they use another woman as a surrogate, a controversial process that is strictly regulated in the UK and illegal in some countries, including France and Germany.
Artificial selection: Mrs Sert had eight embryos frozen before her treatment. Doctors thawed them before transferring them into her uterus - which she received in 2011 from a dead donor
Many British couples end up travelling to India, where clinics hire out women as surrogates.
However, this is fraught with legal issues.
For example, couples whose surrogate children are born abroad have to go to court in the UK to ‘prove’ they are the legal parents.
Adoption does not give a woman the chance to have a child who is genetically her own and, again, there is a strict vetting procedure.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308123/Woman-world-fall-pregnant-womb-transplant.html#ixzz2QGUOtd9t
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