Fetomaternal microchimerism

Fetomaternal microchimerism: Some answers and many new questions.

The transfer of fetal cells into mothers during pregnancy and their organ specific integration is a well recognized phenomenon in placental vertebrates. Recently, it has been reported that some fetal cells found in the mothers have progenitor cell-like features such as multilineage differentiation potential and as a consequence they were termed pregnancy associated progenitor cells (PAPC). The ...

Systemic Microchimerism

Microchimerism: fears and hopes.

For those who are not used yet to this rather recent concept, microchimerism refers to the presence of very low numbers of allogeneic cells in an individual. Most interest in this phenomenon has been raised after the demonstration by the group of Diana Bianchi, a researcher working previously on prenatal diagnosis, that fetal cells – present in the peripheral blood of women during pregnancy – m...

Fetomaternal leukocyte incompatibility.

Iso-leukoagglutinins are known to develop primarily in multitransfused patients (1-6). A possibly different kind of agglutinin for white cells, such as that related to aminopyrine leukopenia, has also been described (7). The therapeutic administration of blood and of aminopyrine may not be the only stimuli for leukoagglutinin production. Two groups of investigators, Dausset, Nenna and Brecy (8)...

Microchimerism in Sjögren's syndrome.

he advent of molecular biology techniques has led to the recognition that cells travel in both directions between mother and fetus. Fetal stem cells traverse the placenta and may persist in the maternal circulation for decades. Similarly, maternal cells may pass into the fetal circulation and persist into adult life. 1 The persistence of genetically different cells in the same person has been c...