ménopause
Israeli gives birth after menopause reversed with transplant of 20-year frozen ovary
Doctor who froze and defrosted ovary ‘cried tears of joy’ when visiting baby born to 46-year-old woman; says success suggests child-bearing years could be extended.
A remarkable 20 years after freezing her ovary, an Israeli woman defrosted part of it, reversed her menopause, got pregnant without IVF, and has now given birth to a healthy baby girl.
She has named her new daughter Eshkar, a word from the Bible that means gift.
The 46-year-old woman, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Tzvia, froze her ovary when she had cancer in her mid-20s.
At that time, the idea of transplanting a healthy ovary back into a woman after she recovered from cancer was just theoretical. In 2016, a woman in Dubai became the first to give birth to a baby after having her ovary retransplanted, and since then there have been hundreds more pregnancies worldwide — though none came after an ovary was frozen for two whole decades.
“She conceived spontaneously at age 45, and she now has a baby girl thanks to pieces of her ovary that were in liquid nitrogen for two decades,” her gynecologist, Prof. Ariel Revel, told The Times of Israel.
“Not only is this a world record, but it also raises the possibility that in the future woman could routinely conceive much older by freezing ovaries in their 20s. What is more, it suggests that this could provide a way to actually prevent menopause.”
Revel, a leading specialist in gynecology and obstetrics, met Tzvia soon after her cancer diagnosis. “She was told that she needed aggressive chemotherapy which could harm her ovaries,” he recalled.
“She came from a religious [Jewish] background and having children was important for her. I had just received permission [from ethics boards] to remove and freeze an ovary, and we removed her right ovary before her bone marrow transplant.”
Santé au féminin: Bien vivre sa ménopause
Allo Docteurs: La ménopause est un changement physiologique qui intervient chez les Femmes entre 45 et 55 ans. Comment mieux vivre cette étape de la vie ? Professeure Plu-Bureau Geneviève, gynécologue.
TANIKO Madagascar 