8 babies born with DNA from 3 people in world-first IVF trial aimed at minimizing risk of inherited disease

Eight healthy babies have been born in the U.K. using a new IVF technique that successfully reduced their risk of inheriting genetic diseases from their mothers, the people behind a world-first trial said Wednesday.

The findings were hailed as a breakthrough, which raises hopes that women with mutations in their mitochondrial DNA could one day have children without passing debilitating or deadly diseases on to the children. One out of every 5,000 births is affected by mitochondrial diseases, which cannot be treated, and include symptoms such as impaired vision, diabetes and muscle wasting.

In 2015, Britain became the first country to approve an in-vitro fertilization technique that uses a small amount of healthy mitochondrial DNA from the egg of a donor — along with the mother's egg and father's sperm.