Britain’s fertility regulator on Wednesday confirmed the birth of the UK’s first babies created using an experimental technique combining DNA from three people, in an effort to prevent children inheriting rare genetic diseases.
Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said fewer than five children had been born this way in the UK, but did not provide further details to protect the identities of the families. This news was first reported by the Guardian newspaper.
defective mitochondria
In 2015, the UK became the first country in the world to adopt legislation specifically to help prevent women with defective mitochondria – the energy source in a cell – from passing the defect on to their children. .
Genetic defects can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, heart problems, and intellectual disability. About one in 200 babies in the UK is born with a mitochondrial disorder. To date, 32 patients have been authorized to receive such treatment.
For a woman with defective mitochondria, scientists take genetic material from her egg or embryo, which is then transferred to a donor egg or embryo that still has healthy mitochondria but the rest of its vital DNA has been removed.
The fertilized embryo is then transferred to the mother’s womb. The genetic material from the donated egg accounts for less than 1% of a child created with this technique.
“Mitochondrial donation treatment offers families with a severe inherited mitochondrial disease the chance of a healthy baby,” the UK fertility regulator said in a statement on Wednesday. The agency said it was still “early days” but expected the scientists involved at Newcastle University to publish details of the treatment soon.
The UK requires every woman undergoing the treatment to obtain approval from the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. The regulator says that to be eligible, families must have no other available option to avoid a genetic disease.
multiple criticism method
Many critics oppose artificial reproductive techniques, arguing that people have other ways to pass diseases to their children, such as egg donation or screening tests, and experimental methods have not yet been proven safe.
Others warn that altering the genetic code in a way that ultimately leads to parents producing designer babies who not only want to avoid inherited diseases but also grow taller, stronger, smarter or Better looking kids are wanted too.
Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell specialist at the Francis Crick Institute, a biomedical research center in London, said monitoring the children’s future development would be important.
“It will be interesting to know how well the[mitochondrial donation]technique has worked on a practical level, whether the children are free of mitochondrial disease and whether they are at any risk of developing problems later in life,” he said in a statement. “
Scientists in Europe published research earlier this year showing that in some cases, small numbers of the abnormal mitochondria that are essentially carried from the mother’s egg to the donor’s egg can be lost while the baby is in utero. can reproduce, which can eventually lead to a genetic disease. , Lowell-Badge said the causes of such problems are not yet understood and researchers will need to develop ways to reduce the risk.
After the treatment was carried out in Mexico, doctors in the US announced the birth of the world’s first baby using the mitochondria donation technique in 2016.
(with inputs from AP)
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