UTERUS TRANSPLANT: GIVNG HOPE TO THE HOPELESS

Sometimes when people display their love for others, one may be tempted to ask if it’s a movie or a dream. Some stories sound really unbelievable and simply like  fairy  tales until you wake up to reality that it’s not just a dream but as real as the pain you would feel if you pinched yourself.

The case of  Lolita Wasterlund, one of the few people in the world to have a uterine transplant is like one of such tales. She was lucky to have her sister donate her uterus for the procedure thereby making it the first and only time this has happened between siblings.

According to details from BBC, Lolita was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome which meant she had only one kidney, a shortened vagina and no uterus making it difficult to carry a baby.

In a chat with Sarah Brett and Nihal Arthanayake on BBC Radio 5 live, she said it was "really hard" because "she always wanted a baby" and "always wanted to be a mother".

This would give some sort of hope to many who have the same medical issues like Lolita hence more enquiries should be made for all those who are interested.

The way medicine and technology is going, it would not be surprising to see the huge number of couples who are struggling with infertility decline drastically given the so many options springing up by the day.

Nevertheless, it is pertinent that before embarking on the options available, it would do a lot of good to check out the risks involved even as Doctors from the University of Gothenburg who performed the surgery on Lolita noted that the procedure  is seen as particularly risky when there is a living donor.

Lolita's sister Linda said she only felt scared after the surgery adding that "when Lolita had got my womb then I got scared. I was thinking what would happen if it didn't work and I've put false hope into my sister's mind". However the good news at the end of the day is that the family was elated when Lolita gave birth to a son Cash-Douglas in June 2015.

Now that kind of love is truely like fairytale.

SOME ANSWERS TO 'THREE-PERSON BABY' ADVANCED IVF CONCERNS/QUESTIONS

A health and science reporter James Gallagher writes on the concerns about engaging in a three-person baby form of  having children, an advanced form of IVF pioneered by the UK given the basis that it was the first country to introduce laws allowing the creation of babies from three people even though the first of such babies was born in Mexico.

It was gathered that despite the technique being designed to eliminate disease, it has however been used as an unproven fertility booster in Ukraine as it was stated that the idea of a three person-baby IVF was devised to prevent the repeated heartache of losing children to illnesses caused by defective mitochondria.

However, as much as a couple of people are embracing this idea of  making  babies from three person, it is also fast becoming a major worry because apart from many couples being duped, scientists as well as ethicists warn that it is a dangerous experiment on mums and babies.

The tiny structures in our bodies convert food into useable energy and are passed on only through the mother's egg. Three-person IVF takes the DNA from mum and dad and puts it in an egg from a donor woman. The resulting child has 0.1% of its DNA from the donor.

The advanced form of IVF was developed at Newcastle University in the UK and the final safety checks were completed in June. So the Mexico birth and the procedure being offered as a fertility treatment has caused concern.

"We appear to be in a race to the bottom," warned Dr Marcy Darnovsky from the US Centre for Genetics and Society.

Criticising doctors offering the technique, she added: "They are ignoring ongoing policy debates and conducting dangerous and socially fraught experiments on mothers and children. And they appear to be actively seeking a media splash on the way down."

"Use of these biologically extreme procedures for infertility is based purely on speculation."

It is argued that some cases of infertility are caused by a "poor" environment inside the egg such as insufficient or old mitochondria or an imbalance in the chemicals necessary to trigger embryo development. And that the three-person technique could overcome those deficiencies.

Dr Dusko Ilic, from King's College London, said there was no way to stop IVF clinics offering the procedure.

While the UK was the first country to create laws to legalise three person IVF, it is legal by default in many countries with little-to-no regulation.

Dr Ilic told the BBC News website: "IVF clinics are jumping on the bandwagon and rushing ahead, whereas the Newcastle team did all the hard due diligence work.

"The major worry is how technically skillful these clinics are, what quality control measures are in place and what information they provide to desperate patients seeking help.

"Are those patients aware of all risks involved?" For example in the Mexico birth - the details of the family and an photograph of the baby were made public without any consent.

James Lawford Davies, a partner at the law firm Hempsons, said: "One example of the way UK regulation protects patients is through the confidentiality which attaches to their identity, the details of their treatment, and their children.

"Any such disclosure would be a criminal offence in the UK."

When the UK allowed the procedure to prevent inherited mitochondrial disease, it did not allow three-person IVF to be used in fertility treatment.

"There was little evidence at the time the law was being changed that the methods were likely to help infertility," said Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, from the Francis Crick Institute.

Such an untried form of conception was thought to be too risky - except in the case of mitochondrial disease where the harms were even greater.

Prof Lovell-Badge said the UK had a reputation for looking "deeply into the issues of science and safety" and that such procedures may be permitted in the future if they were shown to be safe.

He told the BBC: "We can't control this in countries where there are few or no regulations and poor oversight.

"Unfortunately the clinics in such countries have become used to being unregulated, and it is the patients who are at risk of being duped into paying for methods that have little or no benefit or that are even harmful."

Sarah Norcross, the director of the Progress Educational Trust, said fertility clinics had a reputation for "rushing" new techniques to patients.

She advised: "For British women who wish to avoid passing mitochondrial disease to their children, the temptation to travel overseas to access these treatments must be enormous.

"We would caution against this. At present, there are too many unanswered questions about what has been achieved - and how - for us to be confident of patient safety.'

 

KEEP THAT SPERM HEALTHY! ENHANCE FERTILITY!!

Infertility will continue to be a big issue as long as you have couples who stay several years trying for a child to no avail. 

It breaks every couple when they try conception for several years, yet medical consultants keep trying to find out the underlying problems even as the couples are most times declared healthy yet the problem of infertility still persists. It grieves the heart greatly.

I stumbled on a site recently and what caught my attention was the number one way out of the six ways mentioned about how men diminish the quality of their sperm and so deemed it fit to share hoping that it may help a couple of people out there if they stumble on my page.

According to what was gathered from the report, it is recommended that everyman should avoid stress as much as possible and maintain a healthy lifestyle all the time as being unhealthy, coupled with fatigue and stress could have adverse effect on the quality of sperm which is one of the reasons for infertility.

Also part of staying healthy includes keeping the testicles cool, when I say ‘cool’ it means at least 4 degrees cooler than the rest of the body as the sperm count would be affected if the temperature becomes too high.

Now for all those men who drink too many bottles of alcohol per day, it is a ‘no-no’ as that would be too much for the sperm to handle even as smoking is also a ‘no-no’ if you want very good quality sperm. Smoking according to health experts causes erectile dysfunction and a decrease in the flow of blood to the privates and as a guy smokes his chances of experiencing such dysfunctions increases.

  

One very interesting one is the caution against the habit of men who keep their phones in their front pockets. It is advised that since the radiation and vibrations from the phones can decrease sperm count up to 9%, hence the phones should be kept away.

The most informative was the number one caution for the avoidance of plastic bottles and cans that contain Bisphenol A, which would hereafter be referred to as BPA.

Some people may be wondering what is BPA and how does it affect *on a lighter note* “the price of fish”?

It does affect in a lot of ways, if you asked me.

Now take a seat for the very SHORT eye opener on BPA.

BPA according to PLOS Genetics acts as an endocrine disruptor thus men should avoid bottles and cans that contain the ‘disruptor’.

BPA is a common chemical used to harden plastics by manufacturers. Unfortunately, as harmful as they say it is, it is found in nearly everything we use on a daily basis by professionals and nonprofessionals alike. It is found in items within and outside the homes including offices and market places. Just name it, from baby feeding bottles, medical devices, entertainment devices and even the lining of canned foods and drinks and many more products that come our way on a daily basis.

Worrisome, isn’t it? 

From all indications, it seems everyone has got some level of BPA in them as long as you use any of the aforementioned products.

Before the year 2010, the United States Food and Drug Administration had held that BPA was safe until it expressed the concerns after some studies that BPA could have negative effects on the brain, behavior, and prostate glands in fetuses, infants and young children.

Now how does that affect you?

Now you know better.

Let’s avoid BPA as much as possible as we can. Make deliberate efforts!