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Children Help Their Mothers for Decades
Itninja writes "NPR reported this morning on some interesting findings regarding mothers and their children. From the article: 'Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That's because a baby's cells linger in its mom's body for decades and -- like stem cells -- may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It's such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.'"
I read something related to this in a neurobiology article back in October. See this link.
For the lazy, some scientists in Singapore and Asia activated a flourescent green protein in rat males and bred them with normal rat females. After giving birth, the mother rats had neuronal cells with the protein expressed in their brains, making it clear that those cells formerly belonged to their fetuses. And check out this quote:
"Moreover, after the scientists chemically injured the mouse brains, nearly six times as many fetal cells made their way to damaged areas than elsewhere, suggesting the cells could be responding to molecular distress signals released by the brain."
Seems like it makes for a pretty damn good argument for this theory to me.
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I got the full story on NPR-- and the scientist they interviewed brought that up. They *were* under the impression that the placenta formed an impenetrable barrier, and they *did* think that the immune system would attack any remaining fetal cells, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
No. There is no historical statistical correlation between the lifespan of women based on number of children (or even if they had children).
No data doesn't mean its not the case. It mean that no one tested it that way.
Indeed, and such a study was done. The conclusion was a statistically significant increase in the lifespan of mothers vs. childless women, although environmental factors (status level and level of education) were more significant.
Interestingly, older mothers had a slower rate of aging than young mothers.
I haven't RTF, but I heard the NPR report on the way in this morning. They actually addressed abortions, still borns, etc. None of that seems to matter in this finding, merely conception (and probably enough development for the zygote to become a fetus so that there is blood, but I don't think that was said explicitly.)
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