Bird Pinkerton

It's something researchers are still trying to figure out.

So I would not want anyone with sort of an autoimmune disease to immediately assume that it comes from microchimera or this like exchange of cells, right?

But basically, the way that Amy explained it to me is that

We have this immune system and its whole job is to sort of cruise around, check up on various cells and say like, is this me?

And it leaves those cells alone.

But then if it comes across cells that don't look like itself, then my immune system might say, nope, let's get rid of this.

But in an autoimmune disorder, the immune system kind of goes haywire, right?

Like it starts attacking cells that are part of the body, that are part of itself in some way.

And that leads to sort of the swelling, the pain, tiredness, like a whole bunch of different issues that are associated with autoimmune disorders.

And so the way that this is potentially linked to microchimera is it turns out that people who

have carried fetuses at some point in their lives do seem to be at higher risk for autoimmune diseases.

The data that we have now focuses on women, but it shows that these diseases are significantly more likely to affect women as compared to men.

And some studies have found that the chances of getting some of these diseases actually increases after women's reproductive years.

So researchers were kind of looking at microchimera.

And they were thinking like, okay, people who are getting pregnant are bringing kind of foreign cells into themselves that look a lot like them.

Because usually half our DNA comes from each of our parents.

So these cells come in, they become part of the body, sort of part of the tissue.

And then down the line, one scenario is that they do something that the body cells wouldn't usually do, right?

Something more unique to the kids' cells.

Like, is it autoimmune?