He was born in Greece, is a healthy child and has two mothers and a father. This fact has been produced through a controversial technique directed by the Spanish center Embryotools.
Nothing could say that this baby differs from the rest, except that in its cells there is DNA from three different progenitors. Their 46 chromosomes are half of their mother and half of their father, like those of any human being. But it has a small amount of genetic material, outside the nucleus of its cells, that comes from a second mother who played an ovum donor. The technique, called maternal spindle transfer, it was already done to conceive the first baby of three parents in 2016 of Jordanian origin born in Mexico and assisted by US doctors, where the technique is illegal. In this case, we proceeded to this procedure to avoid a disease transmitted through the mother through that DNA that is on the external part of the ovule. However, in this new case it has been carried out for reasons of infertility.
The mother of the baby, of 32 years, suffered severe endometriosis and had undergone several in vitro fertilization treatments without success. Thanks to this pioneering technique, she has managed to become a mother. The process lies in the extraction of the meiotic spindle (nucleus) of an oocyte (immature ovum) not fertilized from the patient, where the DNA is located, and implanted in a healthy oocyte from a donor, which in turn has been previously removed its core. Thus, the resulting ovule contains the genetic material of the patient but the other components, which have a crucial role in the exit to the front of the embryo, are from a healthy and fertile donor. Finally, this ovule is fertilized with the sperm of the couple and implanted in the patient.
This is a technique that does not contemplate universal legality. The UK is the only country where this technique is legal. In Greece, there is neither prohibition nor legality due to the youth of the technique. Therefore, the Spanish researchers took advantage of this legal gap to request legal permits from the National Authority for Assisted Reproduction of Greece, which approved it and allowed the start of the pilot project that has allowed the baby to be born.
En Spain, infertility affects the 17% of couples of childbearing age, around 800.000 people. In Canary Islands el 15% of couples suffer from some type of infertility. The reasons that make an infertile couple are varied, from the habits of life to genetics. However, healthy habits are a key factor to avoid infertility because smoking, alcohol, sedentary lifestyle and obesity or overweight are counterproductive when a woman becomes pregnant. In fact, all these factors increase the risk of miscarriage and infertility. However, there are other causes that can cause fertility problems in women, such as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) or delayed maternity.
