Eight babies have been born in the UK using genetic material from three people to prevent devastating and often fatal conditions, doctors say.

The method, pioneered by UK scientists, combines the egg and sperm from a mum and dad with a second egg from a donor woman.

The technique has been legal here for a decade but we now have the first proof it is leading to children born free of incurable mitochondrial disease.

These conditions are normally passed from mother to child, starving the body of energy.

This can cause severe disability and some babies die within days of being born. Couples know they are at risk if previous children, family members or the mother has been affected.

Children born through the three-person technique inherit most of their DNA, their genetic blueprint, from their parents, but also get a tiny amount, about 0.1%, from the second woman. This is a change that is passed down the generations.

None of the families who have been through the process are speaking publicly to protect their privacy, but have issued anonymous statements through the Newcastle Fertility Centre where the procedures took place.

‘Overwhelmed with gratitude’

“After years of uncertainty this treatment gave us hope – and then it gave us our baby,” said the mother of a baby girl.

“We look at them now, full of life and possibility, and we’re overwhelmed with gratitude.”

The mother of a baby boy added: “Thanks to this incredible advancement and the support we received, our little family is complete.

“The emotional burden of mitochondrial disease has been lifted, and in its place is hope, joy, and deep gratitude.”

Mitochondria are tiny structures inside nearly every one of our cells. They are the reason we breathe as they use oxygen to convert food into the form of energy our bodies use as fuel.

Defective mitochondria can leave the body with insufficient energy to keep the heart beating as well as causing brain damage, seizures, blindness, muscle weakness and organ failure.

About one in 5,000 babies are born with mitochondrial disease. The team in Newcastle anticipate there is demand for 20 to 30 babies born through the three-person method each year.

Some parents have faced the agony of having multiple children die from these diseases.

Mitochondria are passed down only from mother to child. So this pioneering fertility technique uses both parents and a woman who donates her healthy mitochondria.

The science was developed more than a decade ago at Newcastle University and the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a specialist service opened within the NHS in 2017.

The eggs from both the mother and the donor are fertilised in the lab with the dad’s sperm.

The embryos develop until the DNA from the sperm and egg form a pair of structures called the pro-nuclei. These contain the blueprints for building the human body, such as hair colour and height.

The pro-nuclei are removed from both embryos and the parents’ DNA is put inside the embryo packed with healthy mitochondria.

The resulting child is genetically related to their parents, but should be free from mitochondrial disease.

Baby born from three people’s DNA in UK first

A pair of reports, in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed 22 families have gone through the process at the Newcastle Fertility Centre.

It led to four boys and four girls, including one pair of twins, and one ongoing pregnancy.

“To see the relief and joy in the faces of the parents of these babies after such a long wait and fear of consequences, it’s brilliant to be able to see these babies alive, thriving and developing normally,” Prof Bobby McFarland, the director of the NHS Highly Specialised Service for Rare Mitochondrial Disorders told the BBC.

All of the babies were born free of mitochondrial disease and met their expected developmental milestones.

There was a case of epilepsy, which cleared up by itself and one child has an abnormal heart rhythm which is being successfully treated.

These are not thought to be connected to defective mitochondria. It is not known whether this is part of the known risks of IVF, something specific to the three-person method or something that has been detected only because the health of all babies born through this technique is monitored intensely.

Another key question hanging over the approach has been whether defective mitochondria would be transferred into the healthy embryo and what the consequences could be.

The results show that in five cases the diseased mitochondria were undetectable. In the other three, between 5% and 20% of mitochondria were defective in blood and urine samples.

This is below the 80% level thought to cause disease. It will take further work to understand why this occurred and if it can be prevented.

A picture of a mitochondrion taken with a microscope – there are up to half a million in a fertilised egg.

Prof Mary Herbert, from Newcastle University and Monash University, said: “The findings give grounds for optimism. However, research to better understand the limitations of mitochondrial donation technologies, will be essential to further improve treatment outcomes.”

The breakthrough gives hope to the Kitto family.

Kat’s youngest daughter Poppy, 14, has the disease. Her eldest Lily, 16, may pass it onto her children.

Poppy is in a wheelchair, is non-verbal and is fed through a tube.

“It’s impacted a huge part of her life,” says Kat, “we have a lovely time as she is, but there are the moments where you realize how devastating mitochondrial disease is”.

Kat Kitto (R) in black top with her daughter Lily and Monty the dog

Despite decades of work there is still no cure for mitochondrial disease, but the chance to prevent it being passed on gives hope to Lily.

“It’s the future generations like myself, or my children, or my cousins, who can have that outlook of a normal life,” she says.

‘Only the UK could do this’

The UK not only developed the science of three-person babies, but it also became the first country in the world to introduce laws to allow their creation after a vote in Parliament in 2015.

There was controversy as mitochondria have DNA of their own, which controls how they function.

It means the children have inherited DNA from their parents and around 0.1% from the donor woman.

Any girls born through this technique would pass this onto their own children, so it is a permanent alteration of human genetic inheritance.

This was a step too far for some when the technology was debated, raising fears it would open the doors to genetically-modified “designer” babies.

Prof Sir Doug Turnbull, from Newcastle University, told me: “I think this is the only place in the world this could have happened, there’s been first class science to get us to where we are, there been legislation to allow it to move into clinical treatment, the NHS to help support it and now we’ve got eight children that seem to free of mitochondrial disease, what a wonderful result.”

Liz Curtis, the founder of the Lily Foundation charity said: “After years of waiting, we now know that eight babies have been born using this technique, all showing no signs of mito.

“For many affected families, it’s the first real hope of breaking the cycle of this inherited condition.”

– James Gallagher

Health and science correspondent

(BBC News)

Half this year 2025 has also been spent with no answer to how Sri Lanka would begin settling its restructured foreign debts and interests on them, from year 2028 August. When President Wickramasinghe led government began discussing its foreign debt restructuring with the IMF framed within IMF conditions, Sri Lanka had amassed a massive USD 56,092.95 million by end third quarter 2024, the time we were tied to presidential election campaigns.

The last quarter with parliament elections also slotted in, the new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD), sworn in late September last year, had no time to intervene in the economy. Thus the fourth quarter of the year 2024, the first 03 months of President AKD’s rule closed in December with foreign debt increasing to USD 57,133.49 million. An increase of USD 1,040.54 million in 03 months. Sri Lanka had by then agreed with IMF to restructure USD 12.55 billion of its total debts.

According to the IMF agreement signed by President AKD’s NPP government, Sri Lanka has to begin repayments from 2028 August. That would be under AKD’s NPP rule.   

In year ending December 2024, the total foreign trade deficit was USD 6,100 million with an import bill of USD 18,841 million, an increase of 12.1 percent over the previous year, despite fuel imports decreasing. This year 2025, the trade deficit in month of May was USD 473 million, according to the CBSL figures published. This was an increase of 16.9 percent over previous year trade deficit in month of May.

We are in the midst of a two year Middle East armed conflict, that may drag on, even if it does not lead to a cease fire between Israel, Iran and the Hamas armed organisation in Palestine. Uncertainties looming in Middle East may not provide the dollar remittances from migrant labour the government estimated for this whole year and received during the past 05 months. Thus, GoSL may have to face a serious increase in the external trade deficit, if a miracle does not make a change. Assumed the increase would be around 10 percent over the previous year 2024, the external trade deficit may reach or even go beyond USD 6,710 million. To this, has to be added the annual routine debt of USD 2,454 million disclosed by Deputy Minister Jayantha in parliament, to have the total commitment of the GoSL for year 2025. That then would be USD 9,164 million in 2025.

As much as the NPP government, the SJB in Opposition is inefficient and intellectually timid too in responding to governance issues. Thus there is no serious, intellectual debate in how the government could earn the extra USD 9,164 million needed to bridge the trade deficit this 2025. The IMF has no proposal for increased exports to fetch extra dollars. They are only focussed on axing State expenses and increasing “Rupee income” with increased taxing. The IMF thus approved import of luxury vehicles as a source of Rupee income from taxes, wholly ignoring the fact, GoSL would have to burn a heavy load of hard earned dollars including remittances from migrant labour. From January this year till beginning of month of May, Sri Lanka had spent USD 200 million for vehicle imports, according to CBSL Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe. He told media on 22 May, the total value of Letters of Credit opened by then for vehicle imports was USD 450 million. And the NPP government seems happy with a tax collection of Rs.136 billion by end of April.

Now, what is important? Collecting 136 billion rupees, form spending USD 200 million for vehicles, that would need extra dollars for extra consumption of fuel, with greater traffic congestions on urban roads? Fact remains, the IMF has no programme, no proposal to increase the export and service income despite all tax concessions, privileges and State patronage for FDIs and for tourism development given by the State at the expense of the tax payer. The annual gap between import trade cost and the export trade income remains around USD 7,000 to 8,000 million with another USD 2,000 million required for debt servicing.

This should be stressed without ambiguity. The required extra annual income in many millions of dollars cannot be earned with Ministers reducing numbers in their vehicle fleet, from not taking residency in official bungalows, from reducing State expenses in patches, from Ministers stepping into paddy fields carrying a mammoty, or by indicting few officials and politicians of the previous regime.

We need a well designed national development plan that can guarantee annual increase in dollar exports to bridge a trade deficit of about USD 10,000 million. Will the JVP/NPP leadership tell the People what their plan is for such income earning, while going round with their populist propaganda stuff?

– Kusal Perera

In a letter dated 7 October 1971 and sent from Panadura, Ceylon, OED contributor Pearl Cooray wrote to then Chief Editor Robert Burchfield: ‘I have looked up references for the word asweddumize and have succeeded to a certain extent. The Sinhala word aswedduma means “land recently converted into a paddy field”, and the Anglicized word asweddumize means to prepare a field for sowing paddy’. Cooray was a Sri Lankan academic who visited Burchfield in Oxford earlier in 1971, and upon returning to her country and her position in the Dictionary Department of the University of Ceylon, briefly corresponded with the OED, sending the above quoted letter as well as a selection of Sri Lankan newspapers and magazines for the reading programme for the OED Supplements that were in preparation at the time. Her suggestion for asweddumize would have been too late for the word to be considered for Volume I of the Supplements, so Burchfield wrote the word and definition on a paper slip, the main means by which words were tracked until the 2010s, and filed it alongside an earlier slip from July 1970 with the same suggestion from another Sri Lankan contributor, D. N. Ponnamperuma.  

Nothing further is found about asweddumize in the OED’s files until 1986, when botanist D. J. Mabberley, a regular consultant for the Supplement, sent in a quotation slip for the word, which he would have encountered during the time he spent at a university in Sri Lanka. A decade later, another slip records the decision made not to draft an entry for asweddumize due to lack of evidence. ‘Omit (sadly)’was the responsible editor’s regretful note on the slip. 

Almost thirty years later, this sad omission has finally been rectified, with the addition of asweddumize to the OED as part of this update. Current OED Sri Lankan English consultant Rochana Jayasinghe’s research on Pearl Cooray and her contributions to the Supplement helped put asweddumize back on the OED’s radar, and now that the dictionary’s editors have wider access to historical and contemporary Sri Lankan sources than their counterparts in the 1970s and 80s, it was possible to find sufficient evidence for the word, including a first quotation from as far back as 1857. 

Joining asweddumize among this batch of new words are other borrowings from Sinhala, the Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese, the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka. Mallung (first attested 1893) is lightly cooked, shredded (often leafy green) vegetables mixed with fresh grated coconut, chilli, and other spices, served as a side dish, salad, or condiment as part of a typical Sri Lankan meal, while kiribath (1886) is a Sri Lankan dish made with rice cooked in coconut milk and formed into a block, typically sliced into diamond-shaped pieces and served with various types of onion relish or sweetened with jaggery. Kiribath is traditionally eaten at special occasions such as Avurudu (1881), the first day of the Sinhala and Hindu New Year, occurring on the spring equinox (usually falling around 14 April), marked by a period of celebration typically lasting for seven to ten days. 

Other Sri Lankan English words in this update originate both in Sinhala and another widely spoken language on the island, Tamil. Kottu roti (1991) is a Sri Lankan dish consisting of pieces of roti, meat, and vegetables, mixed with spices and curry sauce, and chopped by cleavers as they are cooked on a griddle. It is typically associated with the distinctive sound of the cleavers hitting the griddle as it is prepared by roadside vendors, and its name combines the Tamil word kottu ‘chopped’ with the Sinhala word roṭi ‘bread’. Partly a borrowing from Sinhala and partly a borrowing from Tamil, watalappam (1956) is a custard made from coconut milk (or sometimes condensed milk), cashew nuts, eggs, and spices such as cardamom and cloves, sweetened with jaggery and traditionally eaten by Sri Lankan Muslims during celebrations marking the end of Ramadan. 

Sri Lankan music is represented by the words baila (1973) and papare (2006). Baila, a loan word from Portuguese, refers to an uptempo style of popular music originating in Sri Lanka which combines influences from both Africa and Europe, typically played in 6-8 time, with a syncopated rhythm, as well as to the style of dance performed to this music. Often associated with weddings and other celebrations, types of baila music are also popular in Goa and in the city of Mangaluru, on India’s west coast. Papare, on the other hand, is a genre of Sri Lankan music usually played at cricket and other sports matches, characterized by lively rhythms and typically featuring instrumentation of trumpet, saxophone, trombone, and snare and bass drums. 

Apart from adding new Sri Lankan English words, OED editors have also revised a number of existing Sri Lankan English entries in the dictionary. Both these new and revised entries have been given transcriptions and audio pronunciations based on a new pronunciation model for Sri Lankan English, which is explained in more detail in this article. These enhancements to the OED’s coverage of Sri Lankan English help provide a more complete picture of how the language is used islandwide.

Full list of World English additions and revisions in the OED June 2025 update

(oed.com)