While treatment for cervical cancer, including systemic chemotherapy and regional administration of ionizing radiation, improves survival and cure rates, it can also cause permanent ovarian failure. Since cervical cancer is diagnosed during reproductive years, ovarian failure can be a severe blow to a patient's quality of life. While protecting a patient's fertility has often been studied, there have been no effective options.
Hormonal regulators, such as gonadotropin-releasing hormone, have demonstrated ovarian protection in rats but conflicting data in nonhuman primates. Cryopreservation of embryos has been successful, but there have been no reported successful cryopreservation and transplantation of oocytes or primordial follicles, which are necessary for future fertility. Attempts at ovarian tissue autograft or xenograft without blood vessel anastamoses in animal models and human cases have been promising but hampered by large follicle loss due to ischemia. However, animal models with anastamoses have demonstrated success, but there has been only one prior successful human autotransplant.
In this second successful human trial, C. Hilders, M.D., Ph.D., and a gynecologic surgical team of the Leiden University Hospital, The Netherlands developed a new method of ovarian autotransplantation to preserve ovarian function in
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Contact: Amy Molnar
amolnar@wiley.com
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
8-Nov-2004