
According to a report small portions of male DNA, most likely left over in a mother's body by a male fetus can be detected in the maternal brain relatively frequently. The report was published in the Sep. 26 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by William Chan of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and his colleagues.
The process, called fetal 'microchimerism (Mc)', is common in other tissues such as blood, but this is the first evidence of male Mc in the human female brain. Microchimerism can be both beneficial and harmful to maternal health, since it is associated with processes such as tissue repair, as well as to autoimmune diseases.
Testing for the presence of a particular region of the Y-chromosome in autopsied brain tissues, the research team discovered that 63% of their samples showed potentially long-lasting Mc in multiple brain regions. They also found that women with Alzheimer's disease (AD) had less Mc than women without the disease.
"This is the first evidence that microchimerism can cross the blood-brain barrier to establish male fetal tissue in the human female brain" says Chan.
Source: Eurekalert