A woman has given birth to a healthy baby boy after doctors restored her fertility with ovarian tissue she had had frozen as a child.

Moaza Al Matrooshi, a 24-year-old from Dubai, had one of her ovaries frozen as a nine-year-old and is thought to be the youngest to have had the tissue stored for future use in a pregnancy.



Doctors delivered her baby at the Portland hospital in London on Tuesday where they said the treatment would give hope to other young women whose fertility was at risk from medical treatments for cancer and other disorders.



Al Matrooshi was born with an inherited blood condition called beta thalassaemia which can be fatal if left untreated. But because the chemotherapy with which doctors tackle the disorder damages the ovaries, she had her right ovary removed at the age of nine. The tissue was frozen and kept in storage in Leeds where the operation had taken place.



Al Matrooshi had chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant at Great Ormond Street in London to treat her blood condition before doctors in Denmark transplanted slivers of her unfrozen ovarian tissue onto her left ovary, which had stopped working, and on to the side of her uterus.



After the procedure, doctors found that Al Matrooshi’s hormones returned to normal and her periods returned. To improve her chances of conceiving, she had IVF treatment with her husband Ahmed, which allowed doctors to implant two embryos into her womb earlier this year. “It’s like a miracle,” Al Matrooshi told the BBC. “We’ve been waiting so long for this result: a healthy baby.”

Doctors have performed similar operations before and about 60 women have had their fertility restored with frozen ovarian tissue since 2001. Last year a woman who had an ovary frozen at the age of 13 gave birth after doctors used the tissue to restore her fertility. Al Matrooshi may be the first to have had her tissue stored before she reached puberty.



In July, a 33-year-old woman in Edinburgh became the first in Britain to give birth after having frozen ovarian tissue returned to her body. She had had the material frozen in her early 20s after she was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer.



Doctors in Edinburgh are developing a service to store testicular tissue from boys as young as one to help those at risk of infertility after cancer treatment.



Sara Matthews, a consultant gynaecologist at the Portland hospital, said that 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, told the BBC that 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.

