At the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome today, Dr. Noriko Kagawa, of the Kato Ladies' Clinic in Tokyo, reported that transplanting the ovaries of young mice into aging female mice not only made the old mice fertile again - but also rejuvenated their behavior, and increased their lifespan by more than 40%!

Could this procedure have the same results in human females?

A very small number of women in the world have had ovarian transplants, and some have been more successful than others. Dr. Kagawa stressed that there was still a lot of research to be carried out before it would be known whether ovarian transplants had similar, rejuvenating effects in women, particularly as it would involve waiting for many years until the patients became older.

"At present ovarian transplants are performed with the aim of preserving a woman's fertility after cancer treatment for instance, or of extending her reproductive lifespan. However, the completely unexpected extra benefit of fertility-preserving procedures in our mouse studies indicates that there is a possibility that carrying out similar procedures in women could lengthen their lifespans in general," she said.

The researchers believe it is very important for doctors and patients to know that women have options when faced with cancer treatment that could destroy their fertility. "We have been successful in getting frozen ovaries to function completely normally after thawing and transplantation," said Dr. Kagawa. "So this should no longer be considered an 'experimental' procedure. Ovarian transplantation is the proper and necessary accompaniment to otherwise sterilising treatment for young cancer patients. We must not neglect to freeze and save at least one of their ovaries before cancer treatment."

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