A BOLTON couple hope they have eliminated a genetic disorder in their family after having a rare type of IVF.

Mark and Lisa Twist had not thought about starting their own family when they were told about the life-changing treatment, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

Mark, aged 34, had been diagnosed with a condition called neurofibromatosis (NF1) which causes tumours along their nerve endings when he was eight.

The couple, who live in Lostock, said that if they had conceived naturally their children would have had a 50 per cent chance of contracting the same condition as their dad and a one in six chance of having severe medical complications.

Lisa said: “We weren’t even at a stage where we were thinking about starting a family but Mark was at one of his yearly check-ups and it was mentioned to us and we decided to look in to it. Mark’s NF is quite mild but it can be far worse for people. We wouldn’t want our children to have to go through that if we had the choice.”

PGD enables people with an inheritable condition in their family to avoid passing it on to their children. It involves checking the genes and or chromosomes of embryos created through IVF.

The couple were told about Care Fertility, which has a branch in Bolton, and in 2012 they decided to start with the process. Lisa, aged 34, had 16 eggs tested, but just two of them were healthy.

Some of them did not develop properly and some were found to have the NF1 gene, these were disregarded and one of the healthy embryos was implanted.

The other one was frozen.

Lisa said: “We were quite lucky really because some people try IVF for years to try and have a baby and we had never tried before and on our second attempt it worked. Once I was pregnant there wasn’t any concern about our baby having the condition because even if she did she would still be our daughter, we just wanted to give our children the best chance of being healthy and this was the best way to do that.”

Jessica was born in 2013 and the frozen embryo was used two years later and Lisa gave birth to nine-month-old Thomas in 2015.

Lisa said that she would recommend the process to others. She added: “It’s a personal choice and some people don’t agree with it but we know that it was the right decision for us. I did feel a bit guilty because some people go through IVF for years and it doesn’t work but luckily for us it was successful for us.

"We had it for a different reason than why other people have IVF. We know that if our children go on to have children that they shouldn’t get the condition either.” Despite the success the couple will not be having a third child. Lisa said: “We always said we wanted two children. We would have wanted to freeze more to have the choice, but that wasn’t meant to be and that’s made the decision for us.”