Eggs withstand long-term storage

A baby was born in Japan from an egg frozen 13 years ago

Ksenia Naka, RIA Novosti

In Japan, a baby was born thanks to a mother's egg frozen 13 years ago, the Iomiuri newspaper reported on Saturday.

In 2001, when the child's mother was in high school, doctors revealed that she had an oncological disease – lymphoma. Doctors warned the girl and her parents that infertility could become one of the side effects of treatment. Before the start of treatment, it was decided to take two healthy eggs, freeze them and store them in one of the clinics.

The treatment was successful, the girl returned to normal life and got married last year. By IVF, one of the preserved eggs was fertilized "in vitro", and then transplanted to the mother. In August, she had a healthy baby weighing more than three kilograms.

Despite the progress in the field of artificial insemination, the appearance of a child from an egg that has been frozen for more than 10 years is rare for Japan.

At the same time, due to the rapid increase in the age of marriage and, as a consequence, the so-called aging of childbearing, the practice of freezing eggs "for the future" is becoming increasingly popular among young Japanese women: having frozen an egg at a young age, they get the opportunity for several years or even decades to devote themselves to a career, hobby, scientific work or travel. And then, when all ambitions are satisfied, you can think about the birth of a child without the risk of infertility. Skeptics believe that this practice will lead to women's complacency and will only contribute to an even greater "aging of childbearing".

Three years ago, the birth of a son of 50-year–old Seiko Noda, a politician, a member of parliament from the Liberal Democratic Party, attracted the close attention of the Japanese media. As Noda admitted in one of the TV shows, she began to think about the birth of a child after forty years. Repeated attempts at artificial insemination were unsuccessful due to the non-viability of the mother's egg. Then the couple resorted to the help of a donor: the donor egg fertilized "in vitro" was then implanted into the uterus of the Node. In 2011, she gave birth to a boy.

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