A male baby was born in Mexico in 2016 from a mother with Leigh syndrome using MRT.In September 2012 a public consultation was launched in the UK to explore the ethical issues involved. Human genetic engineering was used on a small scale to allow infertile women with genetic defects in their mitochondria to have children. In June 2013, the United Kingdom government agreed to develop legislation that would legalize the three-person IVF procedure as a treatment to fix or eliminate mitochondrial diseases that are passed on from mother to child. The procedure could be offered from 29 October 2015 once regulations had been established.Embryonic mitochondrial transplant and protofection have been proposed as a possible treatment for inherited mitochondrial disease, and allotopic expression of mitochondrial proteins as a radical treatment for mtDNA mutation load. In June 2018 Australian Senates Senate Community Affairs References Committee recommended a move towards legalising Mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT). Research and clinical applications of MRT were overseen by laws made by federal and state governments. State laws were, for the most part, consistent with federal law. In all states, legislation prohibited the use of MRT techniques in the clinic, and except for Western Australia, research on a limited range of MRT was permissible up to day 14 of embryo development, subject to a license being granted. In 2010, the Hon.
Chorea gravidarum is a rare type of chorea which presents with involuntary abnormal movement, characterized by abrupt, brief, nonrhythmic, nonrepetitive movement of any limb, often associated with nonpatterned facial grimaces. It is a complication of pregnancy which can be associated with eclampsia and its effects upon the basal ganglia. It is not a causal or pathologically distinct entity but a generic term for chorea of any cause starting during pregnancy. It is associated with history of Sydenhams chorea. It mostly occurs in young patients; the average age is 22 years.Recently there has been a decline in incidence which is probably the result of a decline in rheumatic fever (RF), which was a major cause of chorea gravidarum before the use of antibiotics for streptococcal pharyngitis. Pathophysiology
Several pathogenetic mechanisms for chorea gravidarum have been offered, but none have been proven. History of either rheumatic fever or chorea is suspected: the suggestion is that estrogens and progesterone may sensitize dopamine receptors (presumably at a striatal level) and induce chorea in individuals who are vulnerable to this complication by virtue of preexisting pathology in the basal ganglia. The relation to rheumatic fever was strengthened by many studies that showed that women with normal pregnancies before rheumatic fever developed chorea in subsequent pregnancies. At least 35% of patients have a definite history of acute rheumatic fever and Sydenham chorea; 4% of those with chorea gravidarum had acute rheumatic fever.It has been suggested that use of oral contraceptives is an infrequent cause of chorea.