The first UK baby created with DNA from three people has been born following a groundbreaking IVF procedure known as mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT). The technique aims to prevent children from inheriting incurable mitochondrial diseases by using healthy mitochondria from a female donor.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) confirmed that a small number of babies, fewer than five, have been born in the UK as of late April 2023. The regulator withheld the exact figure to protect patient confidentiality. The procedure was pioneered by doctors at the Newcastle Fertility Centre.
Mitochondrial donation involves fertilising eggs from the affected mother and a healthy donor with the father's sperm. The nuclear DNA from the donor's egg is replaced with that from the couple's fertilised egg, resulting in an embryo with chromosomes from both parents but healthy mitochondria from the donor. More than 99.8% of the baby's DNA comes from the mother and father.
The UK Parliament changed the law in 2015 to permit MDT, and the Newcastle clinic became the first licensed centre in 2017. The HFEA has approved at least 30 cases on a case-by-case basis. However, the programme faced delays due to the pandemic, which deterred some donors and affected couples.
Risks remain, including the possibility that a small number of abnormal mitochondria carried over from the mother's egg could multiply in the womb, potentially leading to disease. Professor Dagan Wells of the University of Oxford noted that the reasons for this reversal are not fully understood.
