A research team manages to grow extremely premature fetuses out of a womb.
For those who live 80 years, the time spent in a womb is less than 1%, yet it represents a decisive period for growth and development.
Sometimes, however, there are babies who are born before completing nine months in the mother's womb: and although today there is an accepted protocol (which involves the permanence of the fetus in the incubator) the future could offer better options for feeding a very premature baby and protecting him from infections in a temperature condition and humidity controlled.
Two research teams at the University of Western Australia and Tohoku University Hospital are testing an artificial womb: a bag of material filled plastic with synthetic amniotic fluid and connected (as with a placenta) to systems life support.
At the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology The team has declared to have Successfully supported premature lamb fetuses: “We have demonstrated the success of this technology for the first time by growing extremely preterm lambs for 5 days in a stable, developmentally friendly environment,” says the research manager, Matthew Kemp.
Research could improve treatment for premature babies in the next future.
According to the Lancet magazine in 2014 alone around 15 million children were born in these conditions: they are not simply underweight or small-sized babies, but they also feature many serious indicators of underdevelopment. They often have lungs too small and hearts that are unable to pump blood properly. In the case of babies born close to 28 weeks the conditions are truly extreme, and they are not simple to insure their survival.
Artificial uterus: the problems
Creating a model that functions like a natural womb is very complex: not only does a fetus need safety, but life support and nutrients necessary must be combined so that you don't develop brain damage or infections. The goal is to promote growth and cardiovascular functions identical to those guaranteed by a natural uterus.
Then there is a psychological limit that is already difficult to overcome overcome in case of an incubator: the idea of seeing a fetus grow inside a plastic bag is even harder to digest.
The team led by Kemp was able to support the growth and development of very premature lambs in an artificial environment for 5 days without producing inflammation, infections or brain damage, exceeding by one day the results of a team from the University of Philadelphia who had developed a similar solution in 2017.
The premature lamb fetuses considered in the experiment are equivalent to human fetuses of just 24 weeks: a limit never reached before.
The crucial point now is translate into practice this type of research. Claire Roberts of the University of Adelaide warns in an article in Nature that brain development is affected by factors that cannot be assessed over such short periods.
Ethical doubts
One of the aspects to consider, as mentioned, concerns the ethical question and the topic of abortion: how will this research influence abortion policies, will it allow us to lower the legal limit within which can be aborted, showing that it is possible ensure effectively the survival of fetuses under 20 weeks?
The problem will arise soon, given that the technology is his early stages of development: “There are still several years to go before a system of kind it may be adopted in clinics or hospitals,” says Kemp.