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Medical breakthrough brings healthy daughter after setbacks
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A WOMAN gave birth to a healthy test-tube baby girl yesterday, thanks to medical breakthroughs on hereditary diseases, after losing two sons to a rare genetic disorder.
The 35-year-old had also been through several miscarriages and abortions.
“It is the biggest and best gift for my Women’s Day,” Chen said, crying.
Doctors at the Shanghai International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital said the newborn girl is healthy and free of the genetic disease.
The new technology has ensured that the disease won’t be passed on if the girl has her own children.
She is also the first baby the technique has been used on to prevent hemophagocytic syndrome, or HPS, a rare and fatal condition caused by damage to the immune system from the Epstein-Barr virus.
The woman surnamed Chen, from Zhejiang Province, gave birth to a boy in 2005 who died at five months. The second boy was born in 2008, but died three years later.
Mothers carry the genetic disorder, which affects about 1 in every 50,000-100,000 children.
The chances of a child inheriting the disease is 50 percent. If the child is a boy, they can be healthy, or develop HPS. Girls can be healthy or be a genetic carrier, said doctor Huang Hefeng, president of the hospital.
“After a genetic check, we decided to use the latest technology of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, which can do genetic analysis on early embryos prior to implantation and pregnancy,” Huang said. After one abortion and a miscarriage during the process, Chen became pregnant with a healthy embryo in July.
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