A research team from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine has successfully transplanted lab-grown vaginas to four recipients, and these lab-grown vaginas are still functioning perfectly even after eight years.
The transplant on the four patients occurred between June 2005 and October 2008. After the follow-up this year, the team found that the vagina implants are still functioning well. The sexual organs were created by using the women's own cells and culturing them into tissues. The research team monitored the tissue's growth in the lab until they reach a vagina-like structure.
Underdeveloped vaginas or uterus may be a result of different conditions and the existing methods in correcting these abnormalities have significant drawbacks. One of them is dilation, which is done to expand the underdeveloped vagina's opening. This works 90 percent of the time but for those women who were not helped by dilation, the next option is surgical procedures that are not successfully all the time.
Dr. Anthony Atala, the lead researcher, came up with a better method by creating the transplanted vagina out of a woman's own cells, taken from the external genital. He reported that the transplant, nerves and blood vessels will form around it and after some time; permanent support structure was developed around the transplanted vagina.
The four patients who received the lab-grown vaginas were not available for comment, but they all reported positive results. In one of the questionnaires, one of the girls reported, as quoted by Newsweek, "normal sexual function after the treatment, including desire and pain-free intercourse."
The four girls were diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauster (MRKH), a congenital condition in which the uterus and the vagina are underdeveloped or absent. MRKH is rare and according to the National Institutes of Health, this condition affects 1 in every 4,500 girls.
Further details of the study were published in the April 10 issue of Lancet.
