BACKGROUND Unequivocal eradication of donor leukocyte microchimerism from recipients of long-surviving organ transplants has never been reported. Here we describe a drastic attempt to accomplish this objective. METHODS In control experiments, a rank order of microchimerism and of associated donor specific nonreactivity was produced in Brown-Norway (BN) rats by transplantation of Lewis (LEW) l...

RATIONALE Hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) is a lymphocytic alveolitis provoked by exposure to a variety of antigens. However, the disease occurs in only a subset of exposed individuals, suggesting that additional factors may be involved. Microchimerism has been implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, especially in those showing increased incidence after childbearing age. OBJE...

BACKGROUND A WOMAN OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE OFTEN HARBORS A SMALL NUMBER OF FOREIGN CELLS, REFERRED TO AS MICROCHIMERISM: a preexisting population of cells acquired during fetal life from her own mother, and newly acquired populations from her pregnancies. An intriguing question is whether the population of cells from her own mother can influence either maternal health during pregnancy and/or the ne...

BACKGROUND Naturally acquired microchimerism may arise in the mother and her child during pregnancy when bidirectional trafficking of cells occurs through the placental barrier. The occurrence of maternal microchimerism (maternal cells in the offspring) has been associated with several autoimmune diseases, especially in children. Systemic Lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disorder with...

Autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD) show a female predominance, with an increased incidence in the years following parturition. Fetal microchimerism has been suggested to play a role in the pathogenesis of AITD. However, only the presence of fetal microchimeric cells in blood and in the thyroid gland of these patients has been proven, but not an actual active role in AITD. Is fetal microchimeris...

microchimerism is considered as the occurrence of small populations of cells with a diverse genetic setting within a person. tissue microchimerism is enhanced during pregnancy and is frequently associated with femaledominant autoimmune disorders, response to injury from malignancy, and transplantation effect.

Previous studies have shown elevated concentrations of free fetal DNA and erythroblasts in maternal circulation in women with preeclampsia compared with those with normal pregnancy. Pluripotent and immunocompetent fetal cells also transfer to the maternal circulation during pregnancy, but whether concentrations of fetal mononuclear cells also differed in preeclampsia was unknown. We sought to q...

Fetal microchimerism has been suggested to play contradictory roles in women's health, with factors including age of the recipient, time elapsed since microchimerism occurred, and microchimeric cell type modulating disease. Both beneficial and harmful effects have been identified in wound healing and tissue regeneration, immune mediated disease, and cancer. This area of research is relatively n...

background: the presence of donor leukocytes in recipients of organ allograft has been shown even several years after transplantation. however, it remains unclear whether this donor cell microchimerism plays an effective role in allograft acceptance or is simply a consequence of immunosuppressive conditions in recipients. objective: to study microchimerism in a group of kidney transplant recipi...