UK’s first womb transplant a ‘massive success’ after sister’s donation

Details

Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 23 August 2023

Hits: 661

LONDON - A woman has been given a womb by her older sister in the UK’s first womb transplant.

The 34-year-old married woman received the organ – also called the uterus – during an operation lasting nine hours and 20 minutes at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, which is part of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Her sister, 40, has completed her own family by giving birth to two children, and was willing to donate her womb.

The recipient, who lives in England and does not wish to be named, has stored embryos with the aim of undergoing IVF later this year.

The lead surgeons for the transplant, which took place on a Sunday in early February, were Professor Richard Smith, clinical lead at the charity Womb Transplant UK and consultant gynaecological surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and Isabel Quiroga, consultant surgeon at the Oxford Transplant Centre, part of Oxford University Hospitals.

Speaking to the PA news agency, Prof Smith said the experience had been “quite remarkable”, adding that the operation had been a “massive success”.

He added: “It was incredible. I think it was probably the most stressful week in my surgical career but also unbelievably positive.

“The donor and recipient are over the moon, just over the moon.

“I’m just really happy that we’ve got a donor who is completely back to normal after her big op and the recipient is, after her big op, doing really well on her immunosuppressive therapy and looking forward to hopefully having a baby.”

Miss Quiroga said she was “thrilled”, adding that, following the operation, transplant staff were still cautiously taking it all in.

She said: “It was a very proud moment but still quite reserved – the first two weeks after the operation are nerve-racking.

“Now, I feel extremely proud of what we’ve achieved and desperately happy for her.”

Miss Quiroga said the patient was “incredibly happy”, adding: “She was absolutely over the moon, very happy and is hoping that she can go on to have not one but two babies.

“Her womb is functioning perfectly and we are monitoring her progress very closely.”

The woman receiving the womb was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH), a rare condition that affects around one in every 5,000 women.

In MRKH, women have an underdeveloped vagina and underdeveloped or missing womb. The first sign of the condition is when a teenage girl does not have periods.

However, their ovaries are intact and still function to produce eggs and female hormones, making conceiving via fertility treatment a possibility.

Before receiving her new womb, the woman had two rounds of fertility stimulation to produce eggs, followed by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to create embryos.

Eight embryos have reached blastocyst stage – which means they have a good chance of success in IVF – and were frozen for when the patient undergoes treatment at the Lister Fertility Clinic in central London later this year.

Prof Smith said that, at present, the transplanted womb is “functioning exactly as it should” and the plans for IVF are on track.

The woman will need to take immunosuppressant drugs throughout any future pregnancy to prevent her body rejecting the donor organ.

The transplant is expected to last for a maximum of five years before the womb is removed.

A second UK womb transplant on another woman is scheduled to take place this autumn, with more patients in the preparation stages.

Prof Smith said: “The operation surgically has been incredibly successful.

“The donor and the recipient are two absolutely lovely women. We couldn’t have a better result.

“People say we must feel proud, actually we feel relieved.

“I feel emotional about it all. The first consultation with the recipient post-op, we were all almost in tears.”

He said the day of the surgery, which involved more than 30 staff, was a “big and long day”.

The operation to remove the older sister’s womb took eight hours and 12 minutes.

An hour before the womb was extracted, surgeons began operating on the younger sister.

Prof Smith said: “All of the surgical staff met at 7am and we were back in our hotel at 6.30am the following morning.”

Asked if they felt nervous going into theatre, Prof Smith said: “Not nervous, I would say focused and well aware that failure was not an option.”

Miss Quiroga said: “Richard has been preparing for this for 25 years, I’ve been involved for nine, and we were fully ready to go way before Covid happened…

“So, we are just delighted that this day had come…

“The whole team worked extremely well, it was an incredibly proud moment.

“It was such an amazing feeling.”

Before surgery, both sisters underwent extensive counselling and were reviewed by gynaecologists, transplant surgeons, obstetricians, psychologists, anaesthetists and pharmacists.

They were also assessed by a Human Tissue Authority (HTA) independent assessor to ensure they were aware of the risks and to confirm they were entering into the surgery of their own free will.

The case was also reviewed by an HTA panel before permission was granted to proceed.

The transplant cost of around £25,000 was paid for by donations to the Womb Transplant UK charity.

This included paying the NHS for theatre time (the transplant happened when the operating room was not being used for NHS work), plus the patient’s hospital stay.

Surgeons and medical staff involved in the transplant were not paid for their time.

Prof Smith said he was looking forward to when the patient can undergo IVF.

“Hopefully that embryo will take, and hopefully nine months later she’ll (have a) Caesarean section,” he said.

“Once she’s had a Caesarean section, she does have a choice – six months later – of a complete hysterectomy or to go and have another baby.

“We know right now she wants to have another baby, that’s for sure.”

Miss Quiroga said: “The reason why we’re waiting and not going straight for IVF is because we want to make sure she’s stable and the transplant is stable, and so far she’s been very, very stable.”

If the woman falls pregnant, she will be cared for in a specialist antenatal clinic at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, where the delivery would also take place.

To date, Womb Transplant UK has approval for 10 operations involving brain-dead donors plus five using a living donor, most likely a womb from a sister or mother. It currently has enough funds for four of these operations.

To be eligible for the programme, women must live in the UK, be aged 24 to 40 (or 42 if embryos are frozen before the age of 38).

More than 500 women have contacted the charity over the years. Around 50 are currently going through checks, with a smaller number at an advanced stage.

Asked how many could benefit from womb transplants in future, Prof Smith said: “Realistically you’re talking maximum numbers of 20 to 30 per year on the living donor side for the foreseeable future.

“My guess is that, in future, there’ll be a centre which is based here or between Oxford and Imperial, and another centre in the north.”

The team also hopes to eventually use living donors who are not relatives but are offering their organs altruistically.

Miss Quiroga said: “We have women contacting the charity… such as young women who say ‘I don’t want to have children but I would love to help others have a child’ or’ I’ve already had my children I would love other women to have that experience’.

“So yes, there will definitely be a time in which that is a main source of donors.”

NHS England chief midwifery officer Kate Brintworth welcomed the “potentially exciting development for the NHS” which would give the recipient “the priceless chance of carrying a baby”.

She added: “On behalf of the whole health service, I would like to send my best wishes for a speedy recovery to the donor and recipient on what is an amazing milestone.”

Adam Balen, professor of reproductive medicine and surgery at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said the operation was an “excellent and highly significant achievement”.

3 people ‘suspected of spying for Russia’ arrested in UK police sting

Details

Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 15 August 2023

Hits: 762

LONDON - Three people suspected of spying for Russia have been arrested in Britain as part of an Official Secrets Act investigation.

Two men and a woman have been charged with possessing false identity documents, said to include passports for multiple countries, “with improper intention” and remain in custody ahead of trial.

The Metropolitan Police said it arrested five people by counter-terrorism police as part of the espionage probe on 8 February, across different parts of London and Norfolk.

Orlin Roussev, 45, of Great Yarmouth, Biser Dzambazov, 42, of Harrow, and Katrin Ivanova, 31, also of Harrow, were later charged with the document offences.

All three defendants are Bulgarian nationals who are suspected of spying for Russia, the BBC reported.

The documents allegedly include passports, identity cards and other documents for countries including the UK, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Spain, Greece and the Czech Republic.

They appeared at London’s Old Bailey on 31 July and were remanded in custody ahead of a trial at a future date, which has not yet been set.

Another man and woman arrested in London as part of the Official Secrets Act were released on bail in February and are due to return next month, as enquiries continue.

The three individuals who have been charged are reported to have lived in the UK for years, having held various jobs.

Mr Roussev, whose most recent address is a guesthouse in Great Yarmouth, claims on LinkedIn that he previously served as an adviser to the Bulgarian energy minister.

Upon then moving to the UK, reportedly in 2009, he spent three years as chief technical officer at a financial services firm, and lists himself as having owned a firm involved in AI and advanced communications systems for the past 10 years.

Neighbours in Harrow described Ms Ivanova and Mr Dzhambazov as a couple, with the latter said to be a driver for hospitals, according to the BBC.

Ms Ivanova works as a laboratory assistant for a private healthcare firm, according to LinkedIn, which states she has been in the UK since at least 2013.

The pair ran a community organisation providing services to Bulgarian people, including familiarising them with the "culture and norms of British society”, and according to Bulgarian state documents worked for electoral commissions in London helping Bulgarian expats to vote, the BBC reported.

The security services have said an increasing portion of their work is taken up by “hostile state threats”, and Russia has been a particular focus since the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in 2018.

The former double agent and his daughter survived the initial attack in Salisbury, but a perfume bottle filled with novichok later caused the death of local woman Dawn Sturgess.

Giving his most recent annual threat update, the head of MI5 said the agency was “working intensively to make the UK the hardest possible operating environment for Russian covert action”.

Director general Ken McCallum added: “We’ll need to keep at it: alongside assassination attempts, the Russian covert toolkit includes cyber attacks, disinformation, espionage, democratic interference, and the use of Putin-aligned oligarchs and others as tools for influence.”

Launching the government’s new counter-terrorism strategy last month, home secretary Suella Braverman called Russia Britain’s “most pressing national security priority”.

Russia launches lunar lander in race to find water on moon

Details

Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 11 August 2023

Hits: 703

By Guy Faulconbridge and Joey Roulette

MOSCOW - Russia launched its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47 years on Friday in a bid to be the first nation to make a soft landing on the lunar south pole, a region believed to hold coveted pockets of water ice.

The Russian lunar mission, the first since 1976, is racing against India, which launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander last month, and more broadly with the United States and China, both of which have advanced lunar exploration programs targeting the lunar south pole.

A Soyuz 2.1 rocket carrying the Luna-25 craft blasted off from the Vostochny cosmodrome, 3,450 miles (5,550 km) east of Moscow, at 2:11 a.m. on Friday Moscow time (1111 GMT on Thursday).

The lander was boosted out of Earth's orbit toward the moon over an hour later, at which point mission control took command of the craft, Russia's space agency Roscosmos said.

The lander is expected to touch down on the moon on Aug. 21, Russia's space chief Yuri Borisov told state television, though the space agency previously pegged Aug. 23 as the landing date.

"Now we will wait for the 21st. I hope that a highly precise soft landing on the moon will take place," Borisov told workers at the Vostochny cosmodrome after the launch. "We hope to be first."

Luna-25, roughly the size of a small car, will aim to operate for a year on the moon's south pole, where scientists at NASA and other space agencies in recent years have detected traces of water ice in the region's shadowed craters.

There is much riding on the Luna-25 mission, as the Kremlin says the West's sanctions over the Ukraine war, many of which have targeted Moscow's aerospace sector, have failed to cripple the Russian economy.

The moonshot, which Russia has been planning for decades, will also test the nation's growing independence in space after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine severed nearly all of Moscow's space ties with the West, besides its integral role on the International Space Station.

The European Space Agency had planned to test its Pilot-D navigation camera by attaching it to Luna-25, but severed its ties to the project after Russia invaded Ukraine.

"Russia's aspirations towards the moon are mixed up in a lot of different things. I think first and foremost, it's an expression of national power on the global stage," Asif Siddiqi, professor of history at Fordham University, told Reuters.

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong gained renown in 1969 for being the first person to walk on the moon, but the Soviet Union's Luna-2 mission was the first spacecraft to reach the moon's surface in 1959, and the Luna-9 mission in 1966 was the first to make a soft landing there.

Moscow then focused on exploring Mars and since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has not sent scientific probes beyond earth orbit.

MOON WATER?

For centuries, astronomers have wondered about water on the moon, which is 100 times drier than the Sahara. NASA maps in 2018 showed water ice in shadowed parts of the moon, and in 2020 NASA confirmed water also existed in sunlit areas.

Major powers such as the United States, China, India, Japan and the European Union have all been probing the moon in recent years. A Japanese lunar landing failed last year and an Israeli mission failed in 2019.

No country has made a soft landing on the south pole. An Indian mission, Chandrayaan-2, failed in 2019.

Rough terrain makes a landing there difficult, but the prize of discovering water ice could be historic: large could be used to extract fuel and oxygen, as well as be used for drinking water.

Borisov said at least three other lunar missions were planned over the next seven years, and that after that Russia and China would work on a possible crewed lunar mission.

"My colleagues and I from China will move on to the next phase - the possibility of a manned mission to the Moon and the construction of a lunar base," he said.

Maxim Litvak, head of the planning group for the Luna-25 scientific equipment, said the most important task was to land where no one else had landed - and to find water.

"There are signs of ice in the soil of the Luna-25 landing area," he said, adding that Luna-25 would work on the moon for at least an earth year, taking samples.

Roscosmos said that it would take five days to fly to the moon. The craft will spend 5-7 days in lunar orbit before descending to one of three possible landing sites near the pole - a timetable that implies it could match or narrowly beat its Indian rival to the moon's surface.

Chandrayaan-3 is due to run experiments for two weeks.

With a mass of 1.8 tons and carrying 31 kg (68 pounds) of scientific equipment, Luna-25 will use a scoop to take rock samples from a depth of up to 15 cm (6 inches) to test for the presence of frozen water.