Proof of Concept for Rejuvenating Effect of Stem Cells: Pregnancy

Stem cell research has been controversial for decades. But we are beginning to learn that stem cell rejuvenation therapy experiments have been taking place for as long as humans have walked the Earth.

In earlier articles, we explained how pregnancy can make a woman younger due to the transfer of certain molecules -- hormones, growth factors etc -- from the fetus to the mother. In another article we learned that pregnancy can help make women's brains work better. Now we learn that pregnant women's bodies can be regenerated via embryonic stem cell rejuvenation treatments from the fetus.

These findings come from research in mice done at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York:

Mouse fetuses will give up stem cells to repair their mother's heart. The discovery could explain why half the women who develop heart weakness during or just after pregnancy recover spontaneously.

Hina Chaudhry of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City mated normal female mice with males genetically engineered to produce a green-fluorescing protein in all their body cells. Half the resulting fetuses also produced the protein, making it easy to spot any fetal tissue in the mother.

Chaudhry's team inflicted a heart attack on the pregnant mice and killed them two weeks later to take a look at their hearts. They found some fluorescent cells in the mothers' damaged heart tissue, where they had accelerated repair by changing into new heart cells, including beating cardiomyocytes and blood vessel cells.

Chaudhry says that the phenomenon is an evolutionary mechanism: the fetus promotes its own survival by protecting its mother's heart. Because the cells are easy to obtain from the placenta and unlikely to cause immunological reactions, they could provide a new and potentially limitless source of stem cells for repairing damaged hearts.

"The study is the first to show conclusively that fetal cells contained in the placenta assist in cardiac tissue repair," says Jakub Tolar, director of stem-cell therapies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. _NewScientist

All the debate that has gone on over embryonic stem cell treatments, and we discover that it has been going on in mammals from the beginning.

Now it is a matter of learning how to maximise the positive effects of pregnancy, and to compensate for the potential negative effects.

Of course, in the long run, artificial wombs will relieve most women of the burden of gestation. But for those stylishly retro women who will wish to carry their own -- the advantages continue to build.

Above cross-posted from Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!