Healthy babies born using new genetic egg screening technique

Four women have given birth to healthy babies after having their eggs genetically screened using a technique that offers new hope to childless couples.
The success could help women who have failed to conceive with the help of IVF to have babies. All were taking part in a pilot study testing a new method of looking for chromosomal abnormalities in eggs.

The technique, called comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH) by microarray, could also make it easier for women to give birth later in life when there is less chance of becoming pregnant.

But doctors involved in the trial stress that the technique can only help them identify viable eggs - it does nothing to improve the chances of producing high quality eggs in the first place.

The European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (Eshre) today announced that women at two centres in Bonn, Germany, and Bologna, Italy, had given birth to healthy babies after undergoing array CGH.

The German patient, aged 34, gave birth to twin girls in June. Three months later the 39-year-old woman in Italy gave birth to a baby boy. Later it was revealed that two more women aged 37 at the Bonn centre had given birth to singleton babies in August. A number of other women from the total of 41 taking part in the study are said to be at advanced stages of pregnancy.

Unlike other screening methods, CGH tests all 23 pairs of chromosomes in a cell, not just a limited number. It looks at the two polar bodies - incomplete daughter cells produced during cell division containing unwanted copies of a woman's chromosomes.

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