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An artificial uterus sounds like a scene from Brave New World. In reality, scientists at the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute in New South Wales, Australia, have so far only nursed six embryos of a wobbegong shark through their last 18 days before birth successfully in a souped-up aquarium with delicately balanced chemicals, filters, and monitors that copy a shark’s womb. The ultimate goal is to incubate embryos of the endangered grey nurse shark throughout their gestation. What’s really strange is the reason they need to do it. The grey nurse shark is endangered in part because of its weird way of reproducing:
After mating, a female produces as many as 40 fertilized embryos, separated between two separate wombs. The embryos take nearly a year to fully develop, but they begin hunting long before that. After about two months, their own yolk sacs go dry. Hungry, they start eating their brothers and sisters. After the rampant in utero cannibalization, only one shark — the biggest and strongest — is left in each womb.
At birth they’re three feet long and experienced hunters, with a good chance of survival. But the tiny brood size, nearly year-long gestation period, and relatively restricted maternal capacity — after giving birth, mothers must wait a year to reproduce again — limit the number of young sharks.
Read more about this research in artificial shark gestation at Wired Science. Link
(Image credit: Port Stephens Fisheries Institute)
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A couple of years ago, I mentioned that researchers were making headway toward transplanting a human uterus. Now doctors in Sweden have scheduled an experimental transplant between 56-year old Eva Ottosson and her 25-year old daughter Sara. The daughter has Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser (MRKH) syndrome and was consequently born without a uterus. If the procedure is successful, the uterus that she herself lived in for nine months will be implanted inside her own body. It will be a challenging operation:
Dr Mats Brannstrom, who is leading the medical team, said a womb transplant remained one of the most complex operations known to medical science.
He said: “Technically it is lot more difficult than transplanting a kidney, liver or heart. The difficulty with it is avoiding haemorrhage and making sure you have long enough blood vessels to connect the womb.
“You are also working deep down in the pelvis area and it is like working in a funnel. It is not like working with a kidney, which is really accessible.”
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user tofslie used under Creative Commons license
Well, as long as you’ve got your uterus taken out anyway, why not add a little personal touch? That’s what landed one gynecologist in a bit of a hot water:
After performing a hysterectomy last year, a California gynecologist used a cauterizing tool to brand his patient’s name on her removed uterus, an unorthodox move that the doctor calls a “friendly gesture,” but which the woman terms “despicable conduct” in a medical negligence lawsuit.
In a Superior Court lawsuit filed earlier this month, Ingrid Paulicivic, a 47-year-old hairdresser, charges that Dr. Red Alinsod used an “electrocautery device to carve and burn” the word “Ingrid” on her uterus, which was removed during a June 2009 operation at his Orange County office.
Uterus transplants have been thus far unsuccessful because the transplanted uteri do not maintain a blood supply strong enough to keep a fetus alive. But now British medical researchers may have solved that problem. The Guardian reports:
They have worked out how to transplant a womb with a good blood supply which could mean it lasts long enough to carry a pregnancy to term.[...]
Their most recent study involved five donor rabbits and five recipients, which were operated on at the Royal Veterinary College in London.
Five rabbits received a womb using a “vascular patch technique” which connected major blood vessels, including the aorta.
Of the five, two rabbits lived to 10 months and examinations after death showed the transplants were a success.
Link via Discover | Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
