Stem cells may help older women get pregnant

A pioneering new discovery could reverse women’s biological clocks, allowing them to have babies well into their fifties and sixties.

Scientists have found that injecting a particular type of stem cells into infertile female rats can restore the function of their ovaries, and say their findings could pave the way for a similar treatment for humans.

The researchers, led by Osama Azmy of the National Research Centre in Cairo, Egypt, used a type of embryonic rat stem cells known as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to restore ovary function in experimental rats.

"This is proof of concept, and there is still a long way to go before we can apply this to women," Azmy said in a report of the findings, which were presented at the World Congress of Fertility and Sterility in Germany on Wednesday. "Nevertheless, this work holds out the possibility that women with premature ovarian failure might be able to bear a baby of their own."

Premature ovarian failure, often called early menopause, affects between one and four per cent of all women under the age of 40. Sufferers generally stop producing eggs and ovarian hormones much earlier than normal, and there is as yet no treatment that can restore fertility.

Stem cells are master cells that can develop into any kind of specialised tissue in the body. Described as the body's building blocks, they have a unique ability to cling on to and repair damaged tissue.

They have already been used in small trials to treat heart and bone fracture patients, but this is the first time they are being looked at to help treat fertility.

The potential of different kinds of stem cells is being examined by scientists around the world for many diseases, but the technology is controversial, largely because some stem cell lines are derived from embryos or foetuses – raising ethical issues about “harvesting” these cells from specially cultivated embryos.

The campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics has branded this type of research "unethical". Several religious bodies have also slated the research.

For their study, Azmy's team used 60 experimental female rats and gave three quarters of them a chemical which induced ovarian failure. They then injected a third of these with the stem cell treatment, injected a third with a salt solution or placebo, and gave another third no treatment at all.

The researchers tested the hormone levels of all the rats to see if they returned to normal following treatment.

Within two weeks, the rats who had been treated with stem cells had regained full ovarian function and after eight weeks their hormone levels were the same as the rats who did not have ovarian failure.

"What we have done is proven that we can restore apparently fully-functioning ovaries in rats. The next step is to look how these rats might reproduce," Azmy said.

The technique will then be tested on women.

Previous treatments to kick-start egg production in women include ovarian tissue transplants, which are both expensive and painful.

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