Scientists have developed an artificial womb that has been successfully used to incubate healthy baby lambs for a week.
This marks an advance that may one day be able to save the lives of extremely premature human babies.
Researchers from the University of Western Australia and Tohoku University Hospital in Japan sought to develop an effective treatment strategy for extremely preterm infants.
These include those born at the border of viability (22-23 weeks).
The research showed that preterm lambs were successfully maintained in a healthy, infection-free condition with significant growth.
This is for a period of one week using ex- vivo uterine environment (EVE) therapy.
With further development, EVE therapy could prevent the severe morbidity suffered by extremely premature infants by potentially offering a medical technology that does not currently exist.
At this gestational age the lungs are often too structurally and functionally under-developed for the baby to breathe easily.
For improving outcomes for this group would be to treat them as a foetus rather than a small infant.
The equipment is essentially is a high-tech amniotic fluid bath combined with an artificial placenta.
By providing an alternative means of gas exchange for the foetus, it prevents ventilation-derived injury.
This will help save the lives of those babies whose lungs are too immature to breathe properly," he said.
