[Daily News] A Mother's Revitalizing Gift

dava

By Amy Coombs
ScienceNOW Daily News
23 January 2007

Diabetes type-I patients may unwittingly benefit from a gift their mothers gave them before birth. A new study suggests that small groups of maternal cells, after slipping through the placental barrier during pregnancy, take up permanent residency in the pancreas, where they produce insulin--even when the adult's own cells are giving up. Scientists are hopeful that these cells can one day be harnessed to fight diabetes.
Researchers knew that some cells from the mother manage to cross the placenta and end up in the fetus during pregnancy; until recently, they believed that, except in immunocompromised children, such stray cells were mopped up by the child's immune system. But several recent studies have shown that groups of maternal cells can live on, a phenomenon called maternal microchimerism. They have been found in the thymus, liver, and heart of infants, for instance, and even in healthy adults' blood. Some researchers have suggested that the cells may trigger an immune reaction that mistakenly attacks the child's own cells as well, resulting in auto-immune diseases such as type-1 diabetes. But others believe they might play a positive role, for instance in stimulating growth.

Immunologist Lee Nelson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, and her colleagues decided to focus on maternal microchimerisms in type-1 diabetes. They took blood samples from 94 male and female diabetes patients, 54 of their healthy siblings, and 24 unrelated, healthy adults. Among the diabetics, 51% had maternal DNA in their bloodstream--evidence that their mother's cells are still around--while only 33% of the healthy siblings and 17% of the unrelated people did. That could suggest that maternal cells trigger diabetes, but a second part of the study suggests the opposite is the case.

The team also examined four pancreases removed during autopsies--three from healthy people and one from a diabetic. The team found β islets--which contain insulin producing cells--with maternal DNA in each pancreas, suggesting microchimerisms are part of a healthy organ instead of the source of diabetes. The diabetic pancreas contained twice as many maternal β islets, but the cells didn't appear to be under attack; even when the patient's "own" cells were surrounded by inflammation, the maternal cells appeared healthy and functional, the team reports in the January 22 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It looks like the maternal cells help regenerate the pancreas to some degree, says Nelson, although more work is needed to be sure.

The paper is the first to suggest that the human pancreas has a natural ability to regenerate, says Denise Faustman, an immunologist at Harvard University; "the mechanism is the engraftment of maternal cells," she adds. Scientists are already trying to develop treatments for diabetes by making patients' own β cells reproduce; enlisting maternal cells instead may offer them a completely new approach, Faustman says.

perch88

You forgot to write comments first.

ok... Diabetes type-I
People still has the chance to not have this type and not blame his/her mother. hehe

weainug

very good!!!!There is a boy here.