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From the Scientific American article, “Beyond Birth:  A Child’s Cells May Help or Harm the Mother Long after Delivery” by Nancy Shute

In 1979, Stanford researchers were surprised to see Y-sex chromosomes in a woman. Naturally, females do not have Y-chromosomes (they have two X chromosomes while males have the XY) so they concluded that these came from her son.

It is now known that women who carry their unborn babies to more than 20 months of gestation carry about 6% of the cells and DNA from the fetus in her blood.

What’s the medical implications of this finding? The presence of fetal cells may actually affect the overall health of the mother, although present findings are, overall, ambivalent and still controversial. Scientists find fetal cells in women with scleroderma and systemic sclerosis both autoimmune disorders affecting the skin primarily, and even in those with cervical cancer. On the other hand, a 2007 study by Dr. Vijayakrishna Gadi, et al from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center reported that in the small group of women studied, 14% of women with breast cancer had the fetal cell DNA as compared to 43% of women with no breast cancer. Dr. Gadi said:

Our research found that these persisting fetal cells may be giving a woman an edge against breast cancer….. This experiment of nature is all the more fascinating because for years doctors treated a number of different cancers by transplanting cells from one person to another.

In addition, fetal cells were also found to have repair features in organ damage owing to the fact that they’re stem cells, able to transform themselves to other type of cells when needed. While experts suggest that the mechanism for this particular protective feature could be that fetal cells trigger the immune system.

We can then ask two questions:  (1) Why would the mother’s immune system does not attack the fetal cells and (2) what are these doing in organs with cancer – protecting, repairing or, on the negative side, helping cancer to spread?

As for the first question, experts does not know yet.

Good Hypothesis vs. Bad Hypothesis; The Bystander Hypothesis

In 2007, the US National Public Radio did an interview (with the interviewer’s additional thoughts) with Dr. Kirby Johnson of Tufts University School Medicine and Dr. Carol Artlett of Thomas Jefferson University. In this, Dr. Johnson gave two possible hypotheses:

The Bad Hypothesis suggests fetal cells increases the risk for women to have lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and scleroderma which may be the reason why these are much more common in women than in men.

The Good Hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that the presence of these can help protect, defend and repair the mother in case of illness.

Or maybe these cells just don’t do anything and this is what article writer, Robert Krulwich calls as the “Bystander Hypothesis”.

At this time, the jury is still out as to what really fetal cells are meant for.

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