New York doctor given go-ahead for world's first womb transplant

An American team have been given approval for the groundbreaking operation following laboratory experiments on animals.

Dr Giuseppe Del Priore of New York Downtown Hospital even has potential donors lined up, according to New Scientist magazine.

The technique could be a godsend for infertile women who have no womb and so whose only chance of having children currently is through IVF and surrogacy.

However others have warned the idea is 'bad news' for women and could lead to fatal complications.

Women undergoing the transplant would be given the healthy womb of someone who had died.

It would be connected to her blood supply and she would have to take immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection.

After she had successfully had one or two children she would then have her womb removed so she could stop taking the powerful drug.

Dr Del Priore, an assistant professor of gynaecologic oncology, has previously performed a transplant in a rhesus monkey along with colleagues at Pittsburgh University.

The womb was only monitored for 20 hours but it had a healthy blood supply and the animal's immune system did not appear to be rejecting the organ.

Dr Del Priore said he now hopes to do more research on monkeys to follow a pregnancy in a transplanted womb.

However he claimed this would not be strictly necessary before such research could also be attempted in humans, as face transplants were not tested in other primates before being carried out on people.

He has now been granted permission to carry out transplants on people by the review board at New York Downtown Hospital, which decides whether research is ethical and will not cause undue harm to patients.

'If a person walked in tomorrow and requested a uterine transplant I am cautiously optimistic we could be successful,' he said.

Earlier this year a London doctor surgeon Richard Smith said he thinks womb transplants could be carried out in women in just two years.

Mr Smith of the Hammersmith Hospital said he had 'stunningly good results' from trials in animals to date.

However the technique is not without complications.

In 2000 doctors in Saudi Arabia attempted the same procedure on a 26-year-old but the transplanted womb from a woman 20 years older who had undergone hysterectomy.

But it had to be removed 99 days later because of blood clotting in the connecting blood vessels.

Dr Del Priore plans to transplant more of the original blood vessels along with the donor uterus which he says will reduce the chances of blood clots forming.

If the organ comes from a brain-dead donor whose heart is still beating higher doses of anti-clotting drugs can be used when the uterus is removed, he said.

However many leading experts are highly cautious about attempting such surgery in people.

Professor Mats Brannstrom of Gothenburg University, Sweden, who has been working on womb transplants for six years, said: 'We have to do a lot more animal studies before we go on to humans.'

In 2002 his group carried out the world's only uterine transplant that led to successful pregnancy - and that was in mice.

Prof Brannstrom feels transplanting a uterus into a women before a successful pregnancy in another primate would put prospective recipients at unnecessary risk.

He said: 'It may be successful but we should continue to optimise the procedure before trying it on humans.'

His group is hoping to attempt transplants using a live donor so the woman's mother or a close relative could be used as a donor - reducing the need for immunosuppressants.

Dr Peter Bowen-Simpkins of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London said: 'It would be much better to know what happens when you first try to get a primate pregnant using a transplanted uterus before trying it in a human.'

However he said there seem to be no problems with the surgical procedures if the transplant in monkeys was indeed a success, as the results have yet to be published.

There are several reasons why a woman can lack a womb. Some, with a condition called Rokitansky syndrome, are born without a vagina or a uterus. Others can lose their womb, for example through cervical cancer, or if the organ ruptures during childbirth.

Around 15,000 women a year in Britain who seek help from fertility experts are found to be incapable of becoming pregnant because their womb has been destroyed by fibroids, cancer treatment or because they were born without one.

The only current way such patients can have a child is by using IVF to create an embryo which a surrogate has to carry for them.