Moaza Al Matroos was only nine-years-old when one of her ovaries was frozen. She is considered to be the youngest to have had the tissue stored for future use in pregnancy.
The 24-year-old Moaza from Dubai, recently, gave birth to a healthy baby boy after doctors restored her fertility with the frozen ovarian tissues.
The baby was delivered in a private hospital in Portland, London on Tuesday, 13th December 2016. The doctors believe that this will give hope to other young mothers who are at the risk of loosing their fertility from medical treatments, especially for cancer.
Born with beta thalessaemia, a blood condition which can be fatal if not treated, Moaza had to face treatments from a very young age. The chemotherapy for this disorder could damage her ovaries and hence she had her right ovary removed at the age on nine. It was frozen and kept in storage at Leeds University.
Later, she underwent chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant at Great Ormond Street in London. Doctors from Denmark transplanted slivers of her unfrozen ovarian tissue into her left ovary because it had stopped working.
Following this, the doctors noticed that Moaza’s hormones returned to normal and she started having regular periods. In order to increase the chances of conceiving, she had IVF treatment with her husband Ahmed. This led the doctors to implant two embryos into her womb earlier this year.
“It’s like a miracle. We’ve been waiting so long for this result: a healthy baby,” Moaza Al Matrooshi told BBC.
Sara Matthews, a consultant gynaecologist at the Portland hospital, said “Within three months of having her ovarian tissue re-implanted, Al Matrooshi went from being menopausal to having the ovary function of a normal woman in her 20s.”
Helen Picton, who oversaw the tissue-freezing at Leeds University, said, “In Europe alone, several thousand girls and young women have had ovarian tissue frozen and stored. Most have done so in the hope of having their fertility restored after medical treatment for other conditions,” while talking to the BBC.
Almost 60 women have had their fertility restored with frozen tissue, since 2001. Though doctors have performed similar operations, Moaza Al Matrooshi may be the first to have had her tissue frozen before she reached puberty.
For future purposes, doctors in Edinburgh are looking into developing a service to store testicular tissue from boys as young as one, to help those who are at a risk of infertility.
