In Vitro Fertilisation

(asked on 8th January 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the studies recommended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's expert review panel in the publication, Scientific review of the safety and efficacy of methods to avoid mitochondrial disease through assisted conception: update, published in March 2013 on mosaicism in human morulae have been concluded; and in which peer-reviewed journal his Department plans to publish the findings of those studies.


Answered by
 Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 13th January 2015

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has advised that in its 2014 report the Expert Panel, convened by the HFEA, concluded that, in relation to mosaicism in human morulae:

“Although experiments are already reported on ES cells and their derivatives with MST, further corroborative experiments would be valuable to demonstrate the degree of heteroplasmic mosaicism in morulae, and to provide data to address whether there was any amplification of mtDNA carried over.”

The Panel’s report can be found on the HFEA’s website at:

http://www.hfea.gov.uk/6896.html

The “already reported” experiments were published in Nature in 2013.

At the time of writing the 2014 report, to the Panel’s knowledge, this work had not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The Department does not routinely publish scientific research conducted independently by others.

Reticulating Splines