A Canadian mother has donated her eggs for her seven years old daughter who is suffering from Turner’s syndrome and likely to be infertile when she grows up.
Melanie Boivin, 35, decided to donate some of her own eggs for eventual use by seven-year-old Flavie who had a rare condition Turner’s syndrome which would damage her fertility.
Boivin contacted the McGill reproductive centre in Montreal which has a major egg freezing programme designed to help cancer victims. After an in-depth interview with the ethics committee, she was accepted for treatment. Professor Seang Lin Tang, medical director of the centre, said mother-to-daughter egg donation had never before been attempted.
The McGill Reproductive Centre is a highly specialized provider of infertility treatment located in Downtown Montreal. As part of the McGill University Health Centre, the McGill Reproductive Centre has been at the forefront of research and technological advances since its inception in 1996.
Professor Sean Lin Tan of McGill Reproductive Center, Montreal, who helped the Canadian mother, Melanie Boivin, to freeze her eggs for her daughter, gave details of the case at the 23rd annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Lyon, France, earlier this week.
This is the first case he knows of where a mother has donated her eggs for her daughter to use, he said. Cases of sister to sister donation have been reported.