Doctors freeze eggs of cancer girls aged five

Doctors have extracted and frozen eggs from girls of five having cancer treatment in an attempt to help them become mothers in later life.

The breakthrough offers hope to youngsters who faced the prospect of infertility caused by chemotherapy drugs.

Women with cancer can have their eggs, embryos or ovarian tissue removed and stored in freezers before they are treated so they can have IVF later.

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But for the first time Israeli doctors have found eggs in ovarian tissue taken from girls as young as five - and say they will offer the treatment to girls aged three.

They have frozen 167 eggs from 17 girls aged five to 20, in addition to ovarian tissue containing egg-producing follicles.

Fertility specialist Dr Ariel Revel, from Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem, said the discovery was unexpected because eggs are not normally found in follicles until after puberty.

The immature eggs, which were incapable of being fertilised, were matured in the laboratory using hormones before being frozen.

At the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon, France, he said: "We were surprised. We found seven eggs in a five-year-old with Wilms' tumour and eight in an eight-year-old with Ewing's sarcoma."

Wilms' tumour is a kidney cancer and Ewing's sarcoma is a bone cancer.

Although chemotherapy and radiotherapy are lifesaving, they may cause infertility by destroying the ovaries containing the lifetime stock of eggs or shorten a woman's fertile period.

Ovaries produce an egg a month and keep a supply of reproductive hormones in the body.

Scores of Britons have had ovarian tissue frozen before treatment to preserve a supply of eggs and some have it grafted back in after being cured.

The Israeli study involved 18 girls who had one of their two ovaries removed before chemotherapy. One 16-year-old did not have any eggs.

The tissue was taken under general anaesthetic during procedures to treat cancer.

Most eggs were immature and a third were matured in the laboratory before freezing.

Dr Revel said youngsters tend to develop aggressive cancers that are usually advanced by diagnosis, adding: "Chemotherapy will probably cause infertility in most of these girls.

"Children are very worried about losing their hair but the most significant long-term side effect is damage to their fertility.

"The demand came from their parents, partly because it helps them believe physicians who say their daughters will survive the cancer."

He explained that there was no other option but tissue removal for the girls, unlike older women who can have solely their eggs taken without damage to their ovaries.

He added: "No eggs have been thawed so we do not know if pregnancies will result, but the eggs looked normal in the laboratory.

"We believe no younger patients have ever undergone egg collection and egg freezing and are hopeful it will help them regain their fertility."

Lucy Jackson, of the Teenage Cancer Trust, said: "This offers hope to many young cancer survivors."

Dr Gillian Lockwood, head of Midlands Fertility Services, the only clinic in Britain to have live births from frozen eggs, said: "If it works it's good news, because the big block has been that we thought you had to wait until puberty before getting the eggs.

"But this raises significant ethical issues. Parents will be making the decision in these cases and it may be that they are keen to have grandchildren.

"I don't know if a very young girl will fully appreciate all the arguments."