Israeli doctors freeze eggs of seven-year-old girl with Turner's syndrome
While the girl who was treated has Turner’s syndrome, she can have healthy children because the disease isn’t hereditary, Professor Foad Azem told Haaretz.
By RACHEL WOLFThe process of extracting eggs in a lab in a fertility clinic.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Israeli doctors at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital froze the eggs of a seven-year-old girl with Turner’s syndrome with a technique that had never been used on a child her age, Haaretz reported.To begin the process, doctors used hormonal injections to stimulate her ovaries, Professor Foad Azem, who administered the treatment, told Haaretz. He added that this is the procedure for older patients as well. The physicians, after consulting experts in the field, were able to extract and freeze six of her eggs.“In general, adolescent girls undergo a process to preserve fertility by means of hormonal stimulation. In other words, only after sexual maturity and no earlier,” Azem, who serves as Ichilov’s Director of the in vitro fertilization unit, fertility preservation service and egg donation service, said.“Usually it is carried out in two cases: when a girl with normal ovaries is suffering from cancer, and there’s a fear that the treatments will damage her fertility, and in cases of girls with Turner syndrome, in whom damage to ovarian functioning is usually discovered due to a failure to menstruate.”While the girl who was treated has Turner’s syndrome, she can have healthy children because the disease isn’t hereditary, according to Azem.Most women with Turner's syndrome are usually infertile, “and in very rare cases have spontaneous menses followed by early menopause,” The National Center for Biotechnology Information says.The girl who underwent treatment at Ichilov was reportedly diagnosed with a “Turner’s mosaic,” which means a missing chromosome appears in some cells, according to Haaretz.The center recommends that women with Turner’s syndrome be put on growth hormone therapy as young as two-years-old and be watched throughout their lives.
