Joy at double for couple after radical ‘egg and oil’ treatment

Stacy and James Bodle endured years of heartbreak as they tried to start a family due to an undetected medical condition which caused Mrs Bodle to repeatedly miscarry after falling pregnant.

But a radical and shockingly simple treatment at a Yorkshire fertility clinic – involving the unlikely combination of eggs and soya oil – has finally overcome the problem. Earlier this year Mrs Bodle gave birth to two healthy twins, Harry James and Libby Rose.

She is believed to be the first person to have received the treatment in Yorkshire.

“I’ve hardly slept for the past 13 weeks – but I honestly could not be happier,” said Mrs Bodle, speaking with her twins by her side at the family home and business, Walkers Nurseries and Garden Centre in Doncaster.

“We were trying for three years, and we really did start to think this day would never come for us. There were so many awful times, and to sit here now and see the pair of them staring back at me – well, it’s difficult to describe how it makes you feel.”

Mrs Bodle, 30, first fell pregnant back in 2007 after she and her husband decided to start a family. Tragically, however, she lost the baby within weeks.

“Of course I was really upset, but I thought that these things do happen to people,” she said. “I put it down to luck – I didn’t realise there was something wrong.”

Tests showed she had polycystic ovaries, however, and she was referred to an IVF clinic. The treatment there initially appeared to work, and a delighted Mrs Bodle became pregnant a second time.

Then she miscarried again.

“It was awful,” she said. “We were so over the moon when the IVF worked, because it doesn’t work for everybody. We felt so lucky.

“Then I lost the baby and you just feel like your heart has been ripped out.

“I was adamant then that there was something wrong.”

After a second round of IVF using frozen embryos, Mrs Bodle fell pregnant for a third time – this time with twins. In February of last year, she suffered her third miscarriage.

“It was heart-breaking, for both of us,” she said. “I’d never seen my husband cry before in all the years we’ve been together. He had to try to be strong for me, but it was just as hard for him. When you’ve been for the scan and you’ve seen their little heartbeats flickering away, and then suddenly they’re gone… it’s so hard to take.

“All my friends were having babies and I just thought it was never going to happen for us. All I wanted was to have a family.”

Salvation arrived, however, in the form of a friend who mentioned a condition whereby a woman’s body can have too many of the so-called “natural killer cells” which support the body’s immune system. The overactive cells can attack a fertilised embryo and cause a miscarriage.

Mrs Bodle approached the Care Fertility clinic in Sheffield, where tests showed she was indeed suffering from high levels of natural killer cells, causing her body to reject each embryo. It was then that doctors at the clinic decided to treat Mrs Bodle with a new and somewhat unlikely method first pioneered in Chicago.

She was given three doses of intralipids – a combination of natural fats made up from egg yolks and soya oil. Intralipids are administered through a drip, and normally given as a fast way of treating patients suffering from malnutrition.

“It’s basically just a lot of calories,” said Dr Adel Shaker, medical director at the Care clinic in Sheffield. “But it has been found to help people with this problem. I have to admit I laughed out loud when it was first suggested to me – what could a bit of fat and soya do for the immune system? But then I saw that it works.”

The treatment is still in the research stages and is not currently widely available. But its simplicity and the lack of risk involved mean Care’s clinics have been happy to push ahead with the pioneering treatment – with spectacular results.

“We are surmising that it removes the dangerous signals from the immune system,” Dr Shaker said. “Research suggests that it can suppress the natural killer cells. Previous treatments for this condition are extremely complex and expensive and carry a degree of risk – this is quick and cheap and basically risk-free.

“We have only been doing these tests for the cells since 2010 and I believe Stacy is the first person in this region to have had the treatment.”