Israeli researchers have reported extracting eggs from girls as young as 5 years old with cancer, then maturing them and freezing them for future use. The scientists were surprised to find oocytes in follicles from several girls who had not yet reached puberty, including seven in a 5-year-old girl with Wilm’s tumor, and eight in an 8-year-old with Ewing’s sarcoma.
Using needle aspiration, they were able to collect 167 oocytes in total – an average of 8.5 per patient – which were then matured in vitro and frozen. The median age of participants was 16 years, and oocytes were found in all but one girl. The findings, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology 23rd annual meeting in Lyon, France, could offer an alternative to transplanting ovarian tissue, which is less resistant to freezing than oocytes and may contain cancerous cells.Lead researcher Ariel Revel, from Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, admitted that no eggs had yet been thawed and his team did not know whether any pregnancies would result. However, he added: “We are hopeful that the mature eggs can offer these girls a realistic possibility of preserving their fertility.” In India, we are eons away from cutting edge research - especially Fertility Preservation. We are however at par in clinical medicine with the best in the world. If only research was given importance & weightage in undergraduate & post-graduate examinations, we would top there as well. It is high time that our policy makers bring in this radical curriculum change so that India does not slip off the research map despite being projected as one of the BRIC tigers of the next decade.
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