First “three-parent baby” in South America born in Argentina

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A 31-year-old woman with infertility on Thursday, September 24, gave birth to a baby girl at the Otamendi Hospital in the City of Buenos Aires, through a fertility method commonly called “three-parent baby,” as it requires the genetic material provided by the mother, the egg of a female donor and the sperm of the father.

The baby was born yesterday morning at 10:04 AM, weighing 3.255 kg, thus becoming the first birth in South America through this assisted reproduction technique, according to the gynecologist and obstetrician in charge of the delivery, Aníbal Dal Verme.

“It was a scheduled cesarean section at 38 weeks. It was 9 months of perfect development, with strict control and much support,” said Dal Verme and assured that both the mother and the baby are in good health.

THE METHOD

With respect to the fertility technique called “spindle transfer,” the Procrearte Reproductive Medicine Clinic’s Embryology Laboratory director Ariel Ahumada, who treated the patient, explained that “the egg or oocyte is harvested from a young woman, a donor, and the genetic material is removed from that oocyte and replaced by the genetic material of the patient who is going to undergo the procedure.”

“Then a reconstituted oocyte is obtained with the entire metabolic mechanism of the young oocyte and the patient’s DNA,” said the doctor in Biological Sciences and assured that “after many months of work we have managed to implement the spindle transfer technique and we are the first Latin American institution to successfully apply it to a patient, achieving the first healthy live birth.”

He also pointed out that it is one of the “most technically complex procedures in reproduction centers and only a few laboratories in the world have been able to implement it.”

The specialist said that only three other births have occurred in the world through this technique, the first in Mexico with a U.S. patient and medical team.

Due to the novelty of the procedure, it is not yet contemplated by the National Ministry of Health, and the Procrearte Reproductive Medicine Clinic was required to apply for a special protocol with the patients’ consent and to perform “a very thorough follow-up of the pregnancy,” Ahumada pointed out.

Among the main benefits of this treatment, the specialist noted that “the patient in this case does not have to give up her genetic identity” as is the case when an oocyte donation procedure is performed.

“The donor’s oocyte is used but without her genetic material, with the mother’s genetic material, and that is the great innovation of this technique,” Ahumada emphasized and explained that it is common to speak of “a baby with three parents, but in inverted commas because the nuclear genetic material, which is what determines all of the individual’s characteristics, is in the DNA provided by the mother and not by the donor.”

Finally, the specialist pointed out that the success of this birth “encourages us to implement it in other infertility cases.”