Sunday, April 30, 2017

Artificial womb for LAMBS

Hello friends! I just read a news from online edition of "Indian Express" about a research. According to the said news scientists have created an artificial womb for lambs which would be beneficial in case of Premature birth.
I would like to copy the news content directly to share it with my viewers.
"In a bizarre turn of events, scientists have come up with an artificial womb resembling a plastic bag which can help keep premature lambs alive for four weeks outside of their own mothers’ wombs and could one day be applied to premature babies.
The sealed bag which is made of polythene, mimics the environment of a natural womb. Containing amniotic fluid, it provides all the nutrients and protection needed for growth and also acts as a proper interface delivering oxygen just as an umbilical cord would, and exchanging gases just like a placenta would.

According to CNN, Dr Alan Flake who led the research and a fetal surgeon and director of the Center for Fetal Research in the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said, “We’ve developed a system that, as closely as possible, reproduces the environment of the womb and replaces the function of the placenta. This, in theory, should allow support of premature infants.”
The group of scientists worked with five premature lambs aged 105 to 111 days, as they are developmentally similar to a human fetus at 23 weeks and also also experimented with three lambs that were slightly more mature, age 115 to 120 days.
After the experiment, the team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is now planning to refine the system by downsizing it for human infants and developing the ideal amniotic fluid for human use. This move is to meet the unmet needs of extreme prematurity but it will take time."

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