This week a woman made medical history by giving birth to a healthy baby boy – from an ovary she had removed and frozen when she was just nine.
Now 24, Moaza al-Matrooshi was born with beta thalassaemia, a blood disorder that reduces the production of haemoglobin and can be life-threatening if left untreated.
She was treated with chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant as a child, but such procedures left the pre-teen with damaged ovaries. Her parents authorised for her right ovary to be removed, in the hope that she would one day be able to conceive using it.
In her early twenties, the Emirati national went through early menopause. But after her transplant surgery in Denmark, where doctors stitched five pieces of her ovarian tissue back into her body – four on her failed left ovary and one to the side of the uterus – Moaza’s hormones began to regulate. She then started ovulating and her fertility was restored.
“It is the first time that the success of the procedure has been shown in a pre-pubertal girl, and I’m delighted that this young woman has had her baby,” says Helen Picton, head of the University of Leeds reproduction and early development division, who oversaw the freezing and 14-year preservation.
After undergoing IVF with husband Ahmed to increase her chances, Moaza finally heard the news that would change her life forever.
Moaza, whose first child Rashid was delivered at the Portland Hospital on Wednesday, December 14, said to the BBC, “It’s like a miracle. We’ve been waiting so long for this result – a healthy baby”
“I always believed that I would be a mum and that I would have a baby,” she went on. “I didn’t stop hoping and now I have this baby – it is a perfect feeling.”
Sara Matthews, a consultant in gynaecology and fertility and Moaza’s specialist, told the BBC: “This is a huge step forward. We know that ovarian tissue transplantation works for older women, but we’ve never known if we could take tissue from a child, freeze it and make it work again”.
“The pregnancy was totally uncomplicated and a healthy boy Rashid was delivered by C-section,” she added.
A further embryo of Moaza’s is being stored should she wish to give her baby boy a brother or sister.
Moaza’s success may help pave the way for young chemotherapy patients, who until now have had to abandon hope of welcoming their own kids.
