Healthy babies born in UK using pioneering 3-person IVF technique
Scientists use DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating, rare diseases to their children
Eight healthy babies have been born in the UK using a new IVF technique that successfully reduced their risk of inheriting genetic diseases from their mothers, the results of a world-first trial said Wednesday.
The findings were hailed as a breakthrough which raises hopes that women with mutations in their mitochondrial DNA could one day have children without passing debilitating or deadly diseases on to the children.
One out of every 5,000 births is affected by mitochondrial diseases, which cannot be treated, and include symptoms such as impaired vision, diabetes and muscle wasting.
In 2015, Britain became the first country to approve an in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique that uses a small amount of healthy mitochondrial DNA from the egg of a donor - along with the mother’s egg and father’s sperm.
Some have called the result of this process “three-parent babies”, though researchers have pushed back at this term because only roughly 0.1 per cent of the newborn’s DNA comes from the donor.
The results of the much-awaited UK trial were published in several papers in the New England Journal of Medicine.