Surgeons in Gothenburg, Sweden had spent years transplanting uteruses into women born without one, or who had lost theirs, using donors who were often family members. The real test was not whether the organ would survive, but whether a pregnancy could be carried inside it.
A team led by Mats Brannstrom at the University of Gothenburg transplanted a uterus from a 61-year-old living donor, a family friend, into a 36-year-old recipient born without one. After in vitro fertilization and a single embryo transfer, she carried the pregnancy to 31 weeks before a healthy boy was delivered by cesarean section.
The birth proved a transplanted uterus could support a pregnancy to a safe, if early, delivery, and the team went on to report further births from the same small trial of nine women. Uterus transplantation remains rare, technically demanding surgery reserved for a handful of specialized centers worldwide, and the organ is typically removed after one or two pregnancies.
Read the original study
Brannstrom et al., The Lancet, 2015 · doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61728-1
Motherhood, borrowed from someone else's body.
Source
- Brännström, M., Johannesson, L., Bokström, H., Kvarnström, N., Mölne, J., Dahm-Kähler, P., Enskog, A., Milenkovic, M., Ekberg, J., Diaz-Garcia, C., Gäbel, M., Hanafy, A., Hagberg, H., Olausson, M., & Nilsson, L. (2015). Livebirth after uterus transplantation. The Lancet, 385(9968), 607–616. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61728-1