Medical wonder! Baby born with 3 DNA in the UK
As a result of a pioneering technique in the medical field, a baby has been born with DNA from three people in the United Kingdom. Born out of a special IVF procedure, mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT), the DNA were taken from the parents and a female donor. Reports suggest that up to five such babies have been born so far. Here's more about MDT.
Baby is born through MDT technique
MDT uses tissue from the eggs of healthy female donors to create IVF embryos that are free from harmful mutations their mothers carry. This method aims to prevent children from being born with incurable and fatal mitochondrial disorders. Reportedly, some families have lost multiple children due to mitochondrial disorders. For them, this technique is the only option to have their own healthy babies.
0.1% of DNA comes from the donor
Under this technique, more than 99.8% of the DNA in the babies comes from the mother and father. In addition, the baby will have a tiny amount of mitochondrial DNA (0.1%) provided by a female donor. Reportedly, the donor DNA does not affect other traits such as personality and eye color and does not constitute a "third parent."
Britain was the first country to allow the technique
Parliament changed the law to allow MDT in 2015 as a result of progress with the technique. In 2017, when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approved mitochondrial replacement therapy, Britain became the first nation in the world to do so. HFEA authorized two women to receive MRT in 2018 from fertility physicians at the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life.
This is not the world's first case
The UK is however not the first country to have successfully created a baby from MDT. In 2016, a Jordanian woman gave birth to a three-parent baby after getting treated for mitochondrial mutations. Dagan Wells, a professor of reproductive genetics at the University of Oxford told The Guardian that although the clinical experience in MDT was encouraging, the cases reported were "far too small."
