Italian doctor builds new, more natural vagina

By Stephen Brown

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian doctor has reconstructed vaginas for two women born with a rare congenital deformation, using their own cells to build vaginal tissue in the lab for the first time.

Dr. Cinzia Marchese of Rome's Policlinico Umberto I hospital, giving details of the operations on Wednesday, told Reuters a 28-year-old woman who underwent the first such operation a year ago now has a healthy vagina.

"She has got married and is living a normal life," said Marchese, whose study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction.

The second operation was carried out on a 17-year-old girl on Tuesday and the first signs are that the cells taken by biopsy from the area where her vagina should grow and provide mucosal tissue.

Mucosal tissue is found inside the vagina, the mouth and elsewhere in the body and has important attributes distinct from ordinary skin.

The two women had a condition called Mayer-Von Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, or MRKHS for short, which affects an estimated one in 4,000 to 5,000 female infants.

Girls with the syndrome are born with no vagina. The patient often has a normal uterus, ovaries and external secondary sexual organs such as breasts, but cannot have sexual intercourse or give birth.

"Usually the syndrome is diagnosed when they are young and they try to have sexual intercourse for the first time and it hurts," said Marchese.