A transplant from her twin sister restored her fertility

The sterile twin had lost ovarian function at 14 and failed at egg donation. Her sister, who had three children of her own, offered a piece of her ovary instead of an embryo.

Surgeons removed a strip of ovarian cortex from the fertile twin and grafted it into her sister through a minilaparotomy. Within three months, the recipient's menstrual cycles resumed and her hormone levels normalized. During her second cycle after the transplant, she conceived naturally.

The pregnancy proceeded without complication, and at 38 weeks she delivered a healthy girl, conceived with an ovary that had belonged to someone else just months earlier. The case only worked because the twins were genetically identical, so there was no rejection to manage; it could not be repeated between unrelated donors and recipients without immune suppression.

Her sister's ovary gave her a daughter.