Clipping of news on Brazilian Culture, Law and Citizenship
26/10/2012
This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.
New treatment IVF was tested in humans and animals
Scientists announced on Wednesday (24) have created embryos from three healthy donors.
According to them, the new treatment IVF, which has already caused controversy, has been tested in humans and animals and generated results "promising". The discovery was published in the journal Nature.
Human embryos have been created in the laboratory and had normal appearance, while monkeys born through the same technique remain "healthy," they said. The animals are three years old.
A public consultation on the ethical use of such treatment should be carried out in the UK in the coming days.
The result will be forwarded to the Secretary of Health of the Country (position equivalent to the Brazilian Minister of Health) next year.
The technique was designed to prevent fatal and debilitating mitochondrial diseases that are passed from mothers to children and also cause muscle weakness, blindness and heart failure.
The treatment involving three donors using genetic information central mother and father and enters into an embryo from a donor with healthy mitochondria.
The mitochondria are present in the cytoplasm of oocytes - such as egg white from a chicken. They contain only a small fraction of the genetic material and are responsible for determining characteristics such as hair texture or eye color contained in the nucleus - a speck of yolk in the same analogy.
Scientists have been studying two ways to create embryos from three donors.
One is to get the core of the mother's egg and inserting it into an egg from a donor who has healthy mitochondria and that has had its nucleus removed previously. This new egg can then be fertilized with the father's sperm.
The other way is to fertilize the egg of the mother first before removing its nucleus and insert it into a donor embryo.
The study conducted by U.S. scientists focused on the first option.
Test
To begin the study, the team collected eggs from seven women who agreed to participate in the experiment.
The scientists then replaced the mitochondrial DNA in 65 eggs, and for about a week, analyzed the evolution of the material.
The fertilization rate was similar in 33 of the eggs that had not been previously manipulated, although half of them had some abnormality.
Those fertilized developed to the stage blastocístico five or six days later, the level at which embryos derived from IVF are normally transferred to the tubes of the mother - at a rate of similar control.
Masahito Tachibana and his team said the research shows that the technique can work, at least in the laboratory. It is unclear, however, whether the procedure could result in a healthy baby.
Scientists now want to know if they can do more studies to ensure that the treatment is safe.
Mary Herbert, a professor at the University of Newcastle and experts in the field, also has been studying in vitro fertilization from three donors, but using a different method that takes the nucleus of a fertilized embryo.
She described the latest findings as "encouraging" and said they served as proof that the procedure was on the right track, although he maintained that his technique will present better results.
Future
Before any of the methods being used to help couples have healthy babies, the British government will need to approve the treatment, you will receive a license from the regulatory body - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
An approval in like manner must also be made in other countries.
Last year, the HFEA has reviewed the scientific effectiveness of the two techniques. In the final document, the regulator decided that the two methods could be useful in preventing a mitochondrial abnormality, but recommended that further experiments were done to ensure the safety of the procedure.
For Peter Braude, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at King's College London University, "is about exactly this kind of science that the expert committee of the HFEA collects more tests in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the technique."
- However, we still have a long way to go until treatment can be used in humans.
According to Braude, "only one in five fertilized embryos usually come to the stage where they can be deployed."
- This means that to be sure of embryos which can be transferred around 12 embryos are needed, which is not always possible in an in vitro fertilization treatment.
Source: R7 News
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This article was translated by an automatic translation system, and was therefore not reviewed by people.