A woman in Belgium has become the first person to give birth to a healthy baby using ovarian tissue removed and frozen when she was a child.
The now 27-year-old had an ovary removed at age 13 to undergo treatment for sickle cell anemia, a hereditary blood condition that causes red blood cells to become misshapen and break down.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia at age five, and doctors determined that the disease was so severe that she would need a bone marrow transplant using her brother's matching tissue, according to The BBC.
Frozen tissue has been used only to produce healthy pregnancies in women who had the tissue removed in adulthood . . . until now.
A decade later, four pieces of the frozen tissue were transplanted onto the patient's remaining ovary at her request.
Once transplanted, the tissue began responding to her hormones, successfully growing follicles that contained mature eggs, according to USA Today.
Two years after the transplant, she was pregnant.
The woman gave birth to a healthy boy in November 2014, and details of the case were published on Wednesday in the journal Human Reproduction.
Doctors reportedly expect the woman's ovary function to remain normal, allowing her to have more children in the future.
