Woman has baby after womb transplant in world first

              The first baby from a transplanted womb was born last month in Sweden (Pic: The Lancet)

According to The Lancet medical journal,  A 36-year-old in Sweden has become the world's first woman to give successfully birth to a baby after  receiving a womb transplant. 

The baby boy was born last month, it said, describing the event as a breakthrough for infertile women.  Both mother and baby are doing well.

The baby, weighing 1.775kg (3.9 pounds), was born by Caesarean section at 31 weeks after the mother developed pre-eclampsia, it said.

The transplanted womb was donated by her 61-year-old mother who had gone through the menopause seven years before the surgery. The woman had a genetic condition that meant she was born without a womb but her ovaries were intact.

The organ was transplanted in an operation last year.

A British gynecologist from Queen Charlotte's& Chelsea Hospital Dr J Richard Smith is also leading efforts in the UK to start a womb transplant programme. 

He has founded a charity called Womb Transplant UK with the aim of raising £500,000 to perform the first five operations. 

In the 15 to 24 year old age group in the UK, around a thousand young women have hysterectomies every year which is a commonly performed procedure for the treatment of cervical cancer - many of these cancer victims have not completed their families when they have their wombs taken away. 

The recipient underwent in-vitro fertilisation, in which eggs were harvested from her ovaries and fertilised, and then cryogenically preserved.

A year after the transplant, a single early-stage embryo was inserted into the transplanted womb. A pregnancy test three weeks later was positive.

"Our success is based on more than ten years of intensive animal research and surgical training by our team and opens up the possibility of treating many young females worldwide that suffer from uterine infertility," the British journal quoted Professor Matts Braennstroem of the University of Gothenburg, who led the operation, as saying.

For women without a womb, the only two options which are available are adoption and surrogacy, both acceptable options but fraught with moral, ethical and financial difficulties.