I saw this on the news this morning and I think it's very interesting. I hope it works for them!

http://www.ksdk.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=59051

(KSDK) -- Twins from Arkansas will team up with local doctors on Wednesday, in an historic procedure that could help thousands of women battling infertility.

Stephanie Yarber, 24, started going through menopause at age 13. By 14, she had no ovarian function. Stephanie tried getting pregnant through in vitro fertilization with no success.

Melanie Morgan is Stephanie's identical twin. Melanie has been blessed with three healthy daughters. Dr. Sherman Silber, an infertility expert at St. Luke's hospital, will transplant one of Melanie's ovaries to Stephanie.

This is the first procedure involving live tissue. Dr. Silber is confident the procedure will work, and says a successful procedure could help doctors gain insight into why some women experience infertility.

wow! that is really interesting! this would probably only work with twins though right?

(also gasping at 3 kids at age 24 :lol: )

Wow!

Wow! Thats pretty neat if it works! :crossfing:

OMG!!! That's amazing, I really hope it works for them!

Twin Who Received Ovary Transplant Is Pregnant

(KSDK) - Twin sisters from Alabama have found a medical miracle here in St. Louis.

Stephanie Yarber wanted children, but her ovaries failed and she went into menopause. Her sister Melanie Morgan already had three children and decided to give Stephanie one of her ovaries.

The women had transplant surgery at St. Luke's hospital in April.

Then about a week ago, Stephanie got the news she waited to hear for a long time: she is pregnant, "I can't wait till I start showing because it's like, are you really in there? We had prayed about it and we knew God would bless us with kids, but we didn't know when, or how."

Stephanie's sister Melanie says she's excited about the operation's success and the idea of becoming an aunt, "I love my sister and my brother in law. We're always together and you know, if I had to do it all over again, I would."

Cool!

But the procedure was in April and she is just pregnant now?

Hmmm....interesting. But since Stephanie now has Megan's ovary, wouldn't that mean that the eggs are actually Megan's? I wonder if that will cause controversy between them later on... :dunno:

Yes, she's pregnant now, but I'm not sure how long between the time of the surgery and when they could start trying. They didn't say on the news and it's not in the article.

I hadn't thought about the egg issue.

Never mind. I misread. How odd to have someone else's ovary in you.

Never mind. I misread. How odd to have someone else's ovary in you.
(I don't mean this bad or anything so please don't take it personally) The thought of this being odd never even crossed my mind... I suppose suffering from IF makes changes in lots of ways you never suspect! :nod:

Dr. Silber is a TRUE pioneer in IF medicine and without him and his medical advancements, I never would've had a chance to be BLESSED with my daughter Julia. Thank God people like him exist.

Wow --that is amazing!!!!!!

Hmmm....interesting. But since Stephanie now has Megan's ovary, wouldn't that mean that the eggs are actually Megan's? I wonder if that will cause controversy between them later on... :dunno:
My identical twin sister said if the IVF clinic won't let me use my eggs, she would do the tests to see if hers are good and give me some. I really wouldn't care, it's pretty much the same DNA, right?

Don't identical twins have identical DNA? :scratch:

Anyway, how cool! I'm so happy for them that it worked.

Don't identical twins have identical DNA? :scratch:

Yes they do.

UPDATE! The baby is here :)

http://www.ksdk.com/news/health_art...x?storyid=80418 (http://www.ksdk.com/news/health_article.aspx?storyid=80418)

Alabama Woman Gives Birth To Daughter After Ovary Transplant
created: 6/9/2005 11:37:29 AM
updated: 6/9/2005 12:24:56 PM
http://www.ksdk.com/assetpool/images/0569123923_TransplantBaby.jpg


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By SHEILA FLYNN
Associated Press Writer

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- An Alabama woman who gave birth to a baby girl after undergoing the first ovary transplant in the United States tried to treat the pregnancy as if it had happened normally, one of her doctors said Thursday.

Stephanie Yarber, 25, gave birth Monday night to a 7 pound, 15 ounce girl named Anna, making her the first woman ever to give birth after an ovarian tissue transplant from another person, doctors said.

Her identical twin sister, Melanie Morgan, donated the ovarian tissue that made Yarber fertile.

"She tried to treat it as a normal, regular pregnancy, and we tried to do the same,"' Dr. L. Braden Richmond said Thursday on CBS' "The Early Show." "Certainly in the back of our minds we knew that it was certainly special, and that there was a lot at stake for them, but her pregnancy went great, her labor went great."

Dr. Sherman Silber, an infertility specialist in St. Louis, performed the transplant in April 2004, and Yarber became pregnant only five months later. He said Yarber was "absolutely the first" woman to have a child after getting ovarian tissue from someone else.

Morgan, who has three daughters, called the successful procedure a "partnership with God, my sister and me."

The child was born at a hospital in Russelville, about 20 miles northwest of Montgomery.

"We were very aggressive early in the pregnancy in trying to reassure her that everything was fine," Richmond said. "We did a lot of lab work. This is ground breaking, this is new frontier, but once everything kind of settled into normal, her pregnancy went great."

Yarber became menopausal at age 14 and was unable to become pregnant without medical help. She had tried in vitro fertilization twice, using eggs donated by her sister, but nothing worked until the ovary transplant.

"It's seemed like a wild thing to do, but after 40 years of animal research, it did exactly what we expected," Silver said.

In an interview after the transplant last year, Yarber said she and her sister "are very close."

"It takes a special person, but that's Melanie," Yarber said. "She didn't hesitate when I asked her about it."

Silber said he has since performed the transplant surgery on two other sets of identical twins. He said he believes more infertile women will now seek out the procedure.

In Belgium, a woman had a baby in September after receiving a transplant of her own ovarian tissue. Seven years earlier, doctors had removed and froze healthy ovarian tissue before the woman was made infertile by chemotherapy. They transplanted the tissue back into her body when she was cleared of cancer.

And more than a year ago, surgeons in China reported a successful whole ovary transplant between sisters.

That's great! I wonder if they have to be identical twins. I mean you can get a kidney from a stranger so why not an ovary?

At this point Silber has only considered identical twins. There are "tissue issues" with transferring organs with different DNA that have yet to be dealt with for ovarian transplants. I'm sure Silber will do them as quickly as possible though - he is a pioneer in the field, afterall!

I saw this on the news last night. It is TRUELY amazing. What a great story.