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A team of researchers has documented what it believes to be the “oldest” embryo to date that has resulted in a live birth.
The researchers – all but one hailing from the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk – revealed the record-breaking event in an article featured in the latest issue of Fertility and Sterility, the official journal of the Society for Reproductive Medicine.
According to the team, a 42-year-old patient received the embryo via anonymous donation from an infertile couple that had conceived by in vitro fertilization back in 1990. The embryo had been frozen (cryopreserved) and kept in storage for 19 years and 7 months before being implanted in the patient just last year.
In total, five embryos had been thawed, but only two survived and were transferred the day after.
Nine months later, in May 2010, the woman reportedly gave birth to a boy weighing 6 lbs. 15 oz. The other embryo did not survive to full term.
“A singleton term pregnancy was achieved with the delivery of a healthy boy,” the team reported in its report.
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“To our knowledge this case represents the 'oldest' cryopreserved human embryos resulting in a live birth to date,” it added.
According to reports, the previous record for the longest frozen embryo to result in a live birth was set in 2005 by a San Francisco woman who was implanted with an embryo that had been frozen for 13 years.
Freezing embryos by suspending them in liquid nitrogen is a common procedure in fertility clinics, but the length of time frozen embryos can be stored varies from country to country.
Aside from embryos, eggs, sperm, and ovarian tissue can also be frozen to allow for multiple attempts at becoming pregnant without repeatedly having to give samples or create embryos.
Recently, IVF pioneer Robert Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work leading to the first “test tube baby” in 1978.
While many welcomed the news, critics voiced their disapproval because of the number of human embryos that end up being discarded or used in scientific experiments.
“Without Edwards, there would be no market for human eggs; without Edwards there would not be freezers full of embryos waiting to be transferred to a uterus, or, more likely, used for research or left to die, abandoned and forgotten about by all,” commented Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
In the United Kingdom alone, 2,137,924 embryos were created in British clinics between 1991 and 2005 but about 1.2 million were never used.
Furthermore, just four percent resulted in live births.
For these and other reasons, the Catholic Church remains staunchly opposed to the procedure. Protestants, meanwhile, have been more accepting.
The Christian Medical and Dental Associations, for example, declares in its ethical statement that it approves of IVF in the context of marriage but only when done in a morally responsible manner.
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