Absence of maternal microchimerism in very early onset inflammatory bowel disease R1

Several novel findings support the involvement of microchimerismin different autoimmune diseases.Recently Stevens et al.detected the presence of differentiated, tissue-specific maternalcells in heart sections of patients with neonatal lupus syndrome,suggesting that differentiated tissue-specific maternal micro-chimerism can occur in newborns and that semi-allogenicmaternal cells could mount an active immune response leading toautoimmunity.In the present study we analyzed three children diagnosed withinflammatory bowel disease (IBD) at age 9 months (case 1,female), 2 months (case 2, male) and 4 months (case 3, female),respectively, to verify whether microchimerism could be responsible for the early onset of the disease, through a breaking of tolerance among host cells that switch on a multistep mechanism ofpathogenesis of an autoimmune disease.