New technique allows women with rare mitochondrial DNA mutations to have healthy babies

One in 4,300 children is born with the disease caused by the poor condition and function of mitochondria. Consequences are numerous: weakness, blindness, deafness, seizures, learning disabilities, diabetes, heart and liver failure. The cause of possible fatal disease are mutations in mitochondrial DNA in mother’s egg.

UK doctors determined to prevent inherited mitochondrial diseases in babies

Doctors in UK have been given the licence to use fertilization technique involving three people to create a baby. This procedure will be allowed only in cases where the risk of a child developing mitochondrial disease is very high. The first child born this way is expected in 2018. at the earliest.

The aim of the procedure is to get the healthy mitochondria from the egg of a woman donor. Mitochondria have their own DNA, which means that the child will have healthy mitochondrial DNA from donor’s egg, but nuclear DNK, that defines physical and personality traits, still comes from parents.

However, these babies will not be raised in the UK only. The procedure was successfully performed in Mexico for the first time in 2016th, when a Jordanian couple finally had got a healthy baby.

This technique certainly raises many questions and further research is needed and warranted.

Source: http://bbc.in/2q2R4PY