Dubai: A couple with a four-year-old son suffering from a serious blood disorder has found hope in their unborn baby’s stem cells, a fertility doctor said yesterday.
The baby was conceived in-vitro, or outside the body, after a special genetic screening was done to see if the baby’s stem cells would not be rejected by the boy who is suffering from thalassaemia.
A child with thalassaemia can only be cured through a bone marrow transplant or has to endure a life of frequent blood transfusions.
The healthy stem cells from this sibling will be transplanted to replace the boy’s faulty stem cells that are causing the blood disorder. Stem cells are found in the bone marrow, a spongy tissue inside the bones.
In serious blood diseases such as thalassaemia or sickle cell anaemia, the body does not make enough red blood cells, or they do not work well.
Dr Bassel Noah, senior fertility specialist at the Dubai Fertility Centre, said a special pre-implantation genetic diagnosis was done to make sure certain antigens, or antibody generators, match, or the boy would reject the transplant.
Couples sometimes plan a second baby, hoping the child’s human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matches that of their first affected child.
The doctor said the mother was first given fertility drugs so that she produces enough eggs. One cell was plucked from an embryo to see if it had any genetic disorders and that the antigens match. “Once we found an HLA match, we implanted the embryo into the mother’s uterus. The pregnancy was confirmed after 14 days,” he said.
The doctor said the stem cells from the baby will be kept in a stem cell bank in Dubai and the bone marrow transplant done elsewhere.
Thalassaemia is an inherited blood disorder that produces less haemoglobin and fewer red blood cells in the body than normal.
Haemoglobin is the substance in the red blood cells that allows them to carry oxygen. The low haemoglobin and fewer red blood cells of thalassaemia causes anaemia and a feeling of intense fatigue.
A doctor said that thalassaemia patients are “hooked on to blood” for life and they require blood transfusions every month.
Each patient requires two units per month and the blood comes from regular donors in Dubai.
It is estimated that there are one million people in the UAE who are carriers of the thalassaemia gene. Doctors have urged couples to get themselves tested before marriage. UAE has made pre-marital tests mandatory but many couples get the tests done very late and decisions such as calling off the marriage cannot be taken, doctors said.
Doctors also said a significant section of the expatriate population from south and south-east Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean are carriers of the thalassaemia gene.
