A Survey on the Role of Fetal Microchimerism in the Maternal Body

Abstract

History of fetal microchimerism finding For the first time, in the early 1970s fetal microchimerism was identified in the mother's peripheral blood and lymphocytes cultured as a natural event in pregnant women (5-7). The pathogenicity theory of these cells was first proposed by Nelson in 1996. He noted that transfer of the fetal cells to the maternal body following pregnancy may lead to maternal immune response to these foreign cells and brings about some reactions like graft-versus-host disease and autoimmune reaction (8). Based on the ability of these cells to differentiate into multiple cell lineages or very early stem cells progenitor, they have been