WHILE having children has many benefits, protection against cancer isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. Now it seems that fetal cells surviving in a mother’s tissues may fight off breast tumours, which perhaps explains why women with children have a lower risk of getting breast cancer than childless women. If fetal cell levels can be boosted, it might also help cancer treatments.
During pregnancy, a small number of fetal stem cells cross the placenta into the mother’s bloodstream and can survive for decades in her skin, liver, brain and spleen, a phenomenon called fetal microchimerism. Fetal cells have…
