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OVARIAN tissue transplants could be used like egg-freezing to preserve a woman's fertility into her 40s and 50s but IVF specialists say they will only offer it to women whose fertility is threatened by illness such as cancer.

On Wednesday Monash IVF announced it had preserved a woman's fertility by taking ovarian tissue from her before she had breast cancer treatment in 2005, freezing it, and reimplanting it in her this year. It allowed the 43-year-old woman's body to resume natural ovulation.

Now six weeks pregnant, the Melbourne woman is the 20th in the world and the first in Australia to achieve pregnancy with the ground-breaking technique.

While the technique means menopause can be delayed or reversed, fertility experts said it was still too experimental to offer ovarian tissue freezing to women in their 20s and 30s who were not ready for pregnancy but wanted options in the future.

However, they said the technique, pioneered in Israel, offered hope to thousands of women with endometriosis and those at risk of early menopause. About one in 50 Australian women experience menopause...