While expecting mothers are busy buying the most nutritional vitamins to keep their unborn baby safe, it turns out the fetus is also looking out for the mother.
Research shows that if a pregnant woman suffers organ damage, such as a heart attack, her fetus will donate stem cells to help rebuild the damage.
Scientists started with mice that were genetically engineered to have cells that glowed green under a blue light. Twelve days after the mice mated, approximately two-thirds of the way through a normal mouse's pregnancy, half the mice were induced with heart attacks. A couple weeks after the heart attack, scientists found a lot of glowing green tissue in their hearts that came directly from the fetus.
This isn't entirely new to doctors. They found that women who had weak hearts during pregnancy or quickly after giving birth had a much better recovery rate than any other group of heart failure patients.
Organ damage doesn't have to pertain to the heart, either. Organs such as the brain, lungs, and liver have shown up with fetal cells as well.
In the future researchers hope to isolate stem cells from placenta to provide a steady source of treatment for damaged organs, all thanks to some little pregnant mice.
