Eight babies born using three-parent IVF in UK

Eight babies have been born in the UK using DNA from three people to help prevent severe inherited mitochondrial diseases.

The procedure, known as mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT), involves combining genetic material from the mother and father with healthy mitochondria from a donor egg.

This prevents faulty mitochondria—structures that generate energy in cells—from being passed from mother to child, avoiding life-threatening conditions that can damage the brain, heart and muscles.

The mother of one of the girls said: “As parents, all we ever wanted was to give our child a healthy start in life.

“After years of uncertainty this treatment gave us hope – and then it gave us our baby … we’re overwhelmed with gratitude. Science gave us a chance.”

The four boys and four girls, including one set of identical twins, were born to seven women.

One further pregnancy is ongoing, and none of the babies show signs of the mitochondrial diseases they were at risk of inheriting.

Doctors said all eight children are developing normally and have shown no signs of mitochondrial disease.

One child developed a urinary infection that was treated, another developed muscle jerks that resolved on their own, and a third had high blood fat and a disturbance in heart rhythm, which was also treated.

This last condition was thought to be linked to a medical issue in the mother during pregnancy.

Professor Doug Turnbull from Newcastle University, who helped develop the treatment over more than two decades, said the outcomes were encouraging: “You are inevitably thinking it’s great for the patients and that is a relief.”

Professor Mary Herbert, also part of the Newcastle team, said having eight healthy births was “rewarding for all of us”.

Faulty mitochondria can cause rare but devastating illnesses, often appearing in early childhood.

Symptoms may include developmental delays, seizures and organ failure. About one in 5,000 babies is born with a mitochondrial disorder.

During MDT, the mother’s egg is fertilised with the father’s sperm. The genetic material from both parents is then transferred into a fertilised donor egg that has had its own nucleus removed.

The resulting embryo contains chromosomes from the parents and healthy mitochondria from the donor.