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Latest Surrogacy News
Another
little miracle
First baby born from frozen
embryo at UWI Fertility Unit
by Gwyneth Harold
Jamaica Observer Monday, March 01, 2004
A baby, whether a boy or a
girl, was a distant dream for a couple last year, but
thanks to modern fertilisation techniques their son is 9
days old today.
The little miracle was a landmark development for the
Fertility Management Unit (FMU) at the University of the
West Indies (UWI), as for the first time in Jamaica, an
embryo that was frozen for about a year in liquid
nitrogen was thawed and implanted into its mother to
grow and be born a healthy baby boy.
Head of the FMU, Dr Joseph Fredrick, in an interview
with the Sunday Observer, explained why the procedure
was needed at all.
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Sister Erica Lawrence
holding the first ever male infant born in
Jamaica via a frozen embryo. |
"The husband is 34 years
of age and has a low sperm count. There were less than
200,000 in his specimen, and when we looked at a sample
under the microscope there were five motile sperm. It
was a severe case of male infertility," said Fredrick.
"We had to use the introcytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)
process where sperm was actually injected into eggs to
grow embryos. When we implanted a fresh embryo into the
mother the first time she did not get pregnant, so we
froze the rest and kept them in our embryo bank for when
they were ready to try again."
Last June, the embryos
were thawed and the cells allowed to divide again to
show that they were alive. They were put into an
incubator at body temperature, 37 degrees Celsius, and
after a few hours were transferred into the woman's
normal cycle, when she should be ovulating. Three were
thawed, two put in and one implanted.
Fredrick noted that the
22-year-old mother had previously given birth, so they
placed only two embryos in her womb. For older women he
would have placed more.
"Fresh embryos have a 25 per cent take-home-baby rate.
Frozen embryos are lower at 15 per cent. We had one
woman before. We transferred an embryo that was
previously frozen to her womb. It implanted, but she
aborted after 20 weeks. In young patients, the
implantation rate is very high and we are careful not to
put more than two embryos in women who are under 30
years of age, because we want to avoid the risk of
triplets."
According to Dr Fredrick,
internationally it is estimated that between 10 and 15
per cent of all couples had fertility problems, and that
Jamaica was no exception. He cited reasons for female
infertility as tubal disease, endometriosis, irregular
ovulating, and cystic ovarian disease. For men, the
culprits are usually a low sperm count, a low survival
rate of sperm or absence of sperm in the semen, because
of a blockage in the vas deferens. He also named
Erectile Dysfunction as a factor.
The successful birth from
a frozen embryo is a landmark for the team at the FMU,
which included Dr Vernon DaCosta and Dr Shaun Wynter;
embryologist, Denise Everett; sister-in-charge,
Claudette McKenzie; and unit co-ordinator, Yvonne
Walters.
Two more women are pregnant with embryos that were
frozen and one is due to deliver twins soon.
The FMU, which opened in
2000, took a break in 2002 and resumed in 2003, has been
successful in invitro fertilisation and embryo transfer
processes. In 2001, they reaped success as their first
babies were twins born on March 2, 2001. These babies
were conceived using fresh embryos and are Jamaica's
first "test tube" babies.
The work of Dr Fredrick and his team has generated
interest, and the FMU team has been getting calls from
interested couples in the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas
and Bermuda.
For the new father, his son is a joy that had been a
long time coming.
"The father is elated," Dr Fredrick said. "The baby was
3Kg, a normal size and healthy."
The smile of a first born
son is priceless, but a standard procedure starts at
US$5,000. Fredrick insisted, however, that this was good
value for money. "Our procedure gives a saving to the
patient as they pay for one cycle (to remove the eggs)
and they have enough for three or four implantations. In
the USA they put everything in at one time."
The first baby born by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) was
in the UK in 1978. In 1983, the first embryos were
frozen successfully at several research centres across
the world. Soon after, at least three countries claimed
to have the first baby born from a frozen human embryo.
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