A new study has revealed that a child's genetic makeup may contribute to his or her mother's risk of rheumatoid arthritis.
Researcher Giovanna Cruz said that that female predilection of rheumatoid arthritis strongly suggests that factors involved in pregnancy are involved and during pregnancy, you'll find a small number of fetal cells circulating around the mother's body, and it seems that in some women, they persist as long as several decades.
Cruz said that women with rheumatoid arthritis are more likely to have this persistence of fetal cells, known as fetal microchimerism, than women without the condition, suggesting that it is a potential risk factor for the development of rheumatoid arthritis.
The researchers found that having children with these high-risk alleles - inherited from the children's father - increased the women's risk of rheumatoid arthritis, even after accounting for differences among the mothers' genes. These results showed that beyond a woman's own genetic risk of rheumatoid arthritis, there is additional risk conferred by carrying and bearing children with certain high-risk alleles.
Cruz added that they don't yet understand how the shared epitope and other HLA alleles influence rheumatoid arthritis risk, but one possibility is that interactions between the proteins these genes encode may stimulate the autoimmune symptoms of the disease.
