Healthy Babies Born Using DNA From Three Parents, How Is That Possible?

In the UK, eight healthy babies have been born utilizing a novel type of IVF, which incorporates the genetic material of three individuals. The goal of this procedure will be to prevent children from suffering from serious inherited illnesses caused by defective mitochondria (energy producing structures found in cells), called mitochondrial disorders, including debilitating problems such as seizures, blindness, or early death in childhood.

This approach is now being discussed around the world as medical doctors and scientists watch to see if it is effective. The UK was the first country to legalize this procedure in 2015, and in 2017 the first license was awarded to a fertility clinic in Newcastle, where the procedure was designed.

How Does It Work?
The term used to describe the procedure is called pronuclear transfer, and is ultimately used for women with defective mitochondria that are at increased risk of passing the disorders to children.

Process:

The mother and a healthy female donor both produce eggs.
Both eggs are fertilized by the father’s sperm, similar to what happens in standard IVF.
After about ten hours, the nucleus (which contains most of the genetic material) is removed from both fertilized eggs.
The mother nucleus will get put inside the donor egg (which has healthy mitochondria).
This creates an embryo that contains genetic material from three people; the mother, the father, and a small amount from the donor.
Even though the child has genetic material from three people, the child will still receive >99.8% of its genetic material from the parents.

What happened?
Nineteen women carrying mitochondrial mutations attempted this process. Of those women, seven became pregnant, and eight children were born (including a pair of twins).

There were five infants for whom there was no evidence of mitochondrial disease.

There were three infants with a very low level of mutation, which would not be considered clinically significant by physicians.

A majority of the infants are developing normally, but there were some noted medical conditions:

One infant had some fat in his blood, as well as signs of an irregular heartbeat; both of which resolved with treatment.

A different infant developed epilepsy by the age of 7 months, but the epilepsy resolved.

Whether any of these conditions were linked to treatments is not known, so further monitoring of the children’s health will be undertaken as they develop.

Why Is This So Important?

Defective mitochondria are only passed on by mothers. So, defective mitochondria that are passed on from mother to child may predispose children to life-long illness. There is one case in one of approximately every 5,000 people that is thought to have a mitochondrial disorder, and families have had few ways to keep these mitochondrial disorders from being passed on to their children.

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This new IVF method raises hope for families who want to have a health child, and as research moves forward piggy-backed on the new IVF method it may become a more commonly practiced procedure.