by In Great Britain, eight babies with DNA were born by three people after a procedure for the elimination of an incurable inherited illness.
It is a great progress for the technology, which is referred to as mitochondrial donation therapy and a lifelong, often fatal disease, which is caused by genetic mutations in the structures, generate energy in all of our cells.
It is also a test of the permissible but heavily regulated attitude of human embryo research, which made it possible to create “three-parents babies” for going on.
The babies, four girls and four boys – two of them identical twins – have been born in the past five years and, according to research results, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“It is a great success for these families,” said Sir Doug Turnbull, emeritus professor at the University of Newcastle, who helped pioneer in treatment.
“This is a devastating illness without healing and without this technique, you would not feel that your families were free of mitochondrial diseases. This gives you this opportunity.”
Mitochondrial diseases concern about one of 5,000 babies born in Great Britain.
Depending on the number and type of mutations in their mitochondria, the severity and type of disease can vary, but include neurological, metabolic and developmental disorders.
Only women with high risk of passing on serious illnesses qualify for the procedure if a special facility in Newcastle via the NHS Foundation Trust by Tyne Hospitals.
The identity of the seven families and their babies are held back, but a mother of one of the boys who spoke anonymously said: “The emotional burden of mitochondrial disease has been canceled, and in his place there is hope, joy and deep gratitude.”
How does the technology work?
The procedure is to remove the genetic information from the fertilized embryo of a affected mother before inserting it from a healthy female donor from which the genetic information was removed.
It is crucial that the hundreds of thousands of diseased mitochondria remain so that the new embryo with healthy people is available in the donor embryo.
Mitochondria contain a tiny amount of their own unique genetic code, so that the resulting babies wear DNA from three different people.
But because it only makes up 0.02% of our entire DNA and has no genetic features that we inherit from our parents, researchers have never liked the “three -parents” moniker behind the technology.
The technology – however you call it, is not perfect.
A total of 22 women were subjected to intervention, but only seven were pregnant, which led to eight births – a success rate of 36%.
Five of the eight babies were born without traces of illness.
However, the tests on the other three showed that a small percentage of mutated mitochondria had been carried out during the procedure.
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While they are too low to cause mitochondrial diseases, the babies need careful follow -up care to ensure that they develop normally.
“We designed a study especially for this purpose,” said Professor Bobby McFarland, who heads the service in Newcastle.
“This is that we offer this in Newcastle because there is somewhere else in the world that does this in a regulated way.”
Although there is a good reason to expect the children to develop normally, the process leads medication in new territory.
Since mitochondria contain their own genetic code, girls who were born by the technology – those from the healthy donor who can pass on to all children they could have in the future.
Changing the “germ line” in this way has expressed ethical concerns.
But for seven new families and more, the process promises to heal an illness that has been affected by their families for generations.
