Womb transplants that would allow childless women to have babies could be available as early as next year, a leading researcher said last night.
Following successful animal experiments, doctors are ready to implant women with healthy wombs from donors.
The forecast will bring hope to the thousands of women of childbearing age who are born without a womb or have had it removed because of disease.
The prediction comes from one of the world’s leading pioneers in female organ transplants, Professor Mats Brannstrom of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who has spent more than a decade perfecting the complex surgical techniques needed for a womb transplant.
His team have succeeded in implanting donated wombs in mice, rats, sheep and pigs and are now hoping to achieve the same success in women.
A British team, from Hammersmith Hospital in London, have also been developing womb transplants and have carried out successful experiments on rabbits. The only human womb transplant so far took place in Saudi Arabia in 2000, but the donated organ failed after four months.
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