New hope for babies

TECHNIQUE: IVF REDUCES RISK OF INHERITING GENETIC DISEASES

- 

Eight healthy babies have been born in the UK using a new in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique that successfully reduced their risk of inheriting genetic diseases from their mothers, the results of a world-first trial showed.

The findings were hailed as a breakthrough which raises hopes that women with mutations in their mitochondrial DNA could one day have children without passing debilitating or deadly diseases on to the children.

One out of every 5,000 births is affected by mitochondrial diseases, which cannot be treated, and include symptoms such as impaired vision, diabetes and muscle wasting.

In 2015, Britain became the first country to approve an IVF technique that uses a small amount of healthy mitochondrial DNA from the egg of a donor along with the mother's egg and father's sperm.

Some have called the result of this process "three-parent babies", though researchers have pushed back at this term because only roughly 0.1% of the newborn's DNA comes from the donor.