Wear for a woman who has no uterus a child was unthinkable twenty years ago. Today, transplant research is slowly turning science fiction into reality. In a few weeks, Déborah Berlioz, who was born without a uterus, is due to give birth to a second child at the Foch hospital (Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine).
For women without that bag, which isn’t essential to life but essential to pregnancy, it’s a huge one rising hope. Because if medically assisted reproduction (PMA) has made it possible to take care of male infertility, ovulatory disorders or pathologies affecting the fallopian tubes, women with uterine infertility have had to do it until now. idea of not being pregnant. The only alternative: adoption, a complicated course or surrogacy (GPA), which is banned in France.
One in 4,500 women in France is affected by Rokitansky syndrome (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser, MRKH), a congenital condition characterized by the absence of a uterus and sometimes an anomaly of the vagina, ie about a hundred little girls a year . “These women mourn motherhood, and they experience it all the more unfairly because they have a reproductive system, their ovaries are normal, their hormonal cycle is perfect – from pituitary to ovulation – but the absence of a uterus is synonymous with infertility,” stresses Professor Jean-Marc Ayoubi, obstetrician-gynecologist behind the first uterus transplant in France, carried out as part of a research protocol. Déborah Berlioz received this as a gift from her mother in March 2019. Two years later a little girl was born. A double premiere in France. A little sister is due in a few weeks. Another transplant took place in September 2022; this time the 41-year-old donor was the patient’s sister.
A global achievement
Mats Brännström, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Gothenburg Hospital (Sweden), paved the way. Their first clinical trial resulted in nine transplants between 2012 and 2013. A world achievement, the result of more than fifteen years of research. The team has just completed its third clinical trial, and uterine transplantation is expected to become routine care later this year.
It all started in 1998 when Mats Brännström flew to Adelaide (Australia). He has just received a research grant in gynecological and oncological surgery. But an encounter will alter its trajectory. “I had to tell a young woman in her twenties about this hysterectomy [ablation de l’utérus] that she would suffer would prevent her from having a child, he recalls. She replied: “I have the solution: you can transplant my mother’s uterus to me.” To be honest, I had never thought of this possibility. »
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