Keio University said Thursday that its ethics committee has approved clinical research in which women without uteruses are given transplants of other people's uteruses in order to become pregnant and give birth.
The university said it will consider whether to carry out the research, which would be the first uterine transplant procedure in Japan.
The research proposal calls for recruiting three women in their 20s or 30s with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, who were born without a uterus. Under the plan, researchers will first produce fertilized eggs through in vitro fertilization using the women's eggs and their husbands' sperm.
They will then transplant uteruses from donors — expected to be mothers or other relatives — and insert the fertilized eggs. The plan aims to achieve the women's pregnancy and childbirth.
A research team from Keio University applied in November 2011 for approval from the university's ethics committee, after the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences published a report in July 2021 that gave the green light to conducting uterine transplants as clinical research.
According to the research team, one in roughly 4,500 people suffers from MRKH syndrome in Japan. There are about 130 new patients every year, and the total number of people with the syndrome between the ages of 20 and 39 is estimated to be about 3,500.
A woman who received a uterine transplant successfully gave birth for the first time in 2014 in Sweden. According to Keio University's website, 98 transplants have been conducted worldwide as of October 2022, resulting in 52 childbirths.
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