Fetomaternal microchimerism - second part

Very often we can hear mothers saying that they felt very well during pregnancy, “better than ever”, and that most of their usual problems with the functioning of some organs, completely disappeared during pregnancy. Before investigating this phenomenon, scientists assumed this is solely psychologically caused, but later studies proved that babies have huge potential to help and cure certain malfunctioning in the mother’s body while women are pregnant.

“Fetomaternal microchimerism (FMC) is a special form of chimerism observed in placental vertebrates in whom a small number of fetal cells called PAPCs migrate into the mother and integrate into maternal organs during pregnancy.” (1) To simplify terms, we can understand that the baby’s cells have huge potential to change and develop. Some of these cells will be sent into a mother’s organism to repair certain problems there. We don’t know exactly why this process happens, from where is an instruction sent for cells to travel and repair but we can understand the need for the perfect environment for babies to develop well and probably, this is the main cause of all this happening.

These cells (PAPCs) have the potential to survive a long time and capability of engraftment. During their development, PAPCs have the final goal of becoming blood cells, skin cells or central nervous system cells and with such huge plasticity, we can see repairing different organs and improving the overall environment for further baby’s growth while in the uterus.

The pathway can not be instructed outside and the whole process is still under observation, but after almost 50 years of the first recognition of fetomaternal microchimerism, we can finally conclude that it is always present and constant. Another conclusion is that women who were pregnant are healthier and in most cases, live longer in comparison with women who choose not to be a mother. This must be taken with reserve since many factors influence life and health.

1* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3084951/