U.S. doctor announces birth of baby born from frozen egg

A Los Angeles-area fertility doctor on Thursday announced the birth of a baby from a chomosomally tested frozen egg, the first of its kind.

The birth paves the way for successful pregnancies for women who prefer to delay childbearing, said Dr. Aykut Bayrak, who has research offices in West Los Angeles, Glendale and the Inland Empire.

The baby was born May 3 in Southern California after vitro fertilization treatment that involved egg freezing combined with a genetic test called comparative genomic hybridization, according to Bayrak, a fertility specialist and the Medical Director of PRC/ SIRM.

SIRM/PRC is the premier infertility and IVF (in-vitro fertilization) clinic in Southern California.

"Egg freezing offers women an excellent choice," Bayrak said. " Women are born with a finite number of eggs and their egg reserve decreases over time. If a woman desires to delay pregnancy, she can now stop her biological clock by freezing her eggs with the genetic testing that our center offers."

Egg freezing has emerged as a viable option for fertility preservation over the past decade, but it has not been possible to reliably screen eggs for chromosomal abnormalities until recently, Bayrak said.

Comparative genomic hybridization makes it possible to identify chromosomally normal eggs at the time of egg freezing to be used later when pregnancy is desired, he said, adding that chromosomally normal eggs reduce the chances of miscarriages and birth defects.

Bayrak said that, in a healthy woman younger than 35, only 30- 40 percent of the eggs produced are chromosomally normal.

Source:Xinhua