4 ms·
As a guess, a follow up study should maybe consider that chimerism is a factor. IIRC, a woman remains a chimera for about 27 (or 27.5?) years after giving birth
by Mz 9y ago
As a guess, a follow up study should maybe consider that chimerism is a factor. IIRC, a woman remains a chimera for about 27 (or 27.5?) years after giving birth (ie her blood contains DNA from the child she carried). So, you could look at data for female blood donors whose last pregnancy was more than 27 years ago and those whose last pregnancy was less than 27 years ago.
- rabboRubble 9y agoI wonder if that data is even captured in the donation process? Aren’t donations pooled? Can’t imagine this would leave very many pools without a single ever-pregnant donor.
- Mz 9y agoYa got me. I don't know much about blood donation. I'm just a mom who has reason to be curious about medical side effects of having had children.
- dogma1138 9y agoAs far as I know only Plasma doses are pooled because of the washing process. Pooling is also done for blood testing they’ll pool samples from a batch together and if the pooled sample comes back positive they’ll discard the entire batch of part of it if subpooling was used. Red blood cells doses come from a single donor. I’m not sure about platelets.
- jessriedel 9y agoThere is no way that the number of years fetal DNA remains in a mother's system is precise to 3 significant figures.
- Mz 9y agoI am on my phone. This is my source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155613 Though searching suggests, no, they probably don't have that figure locked down.