Placental chimerism in early human pregnancy

Background: Human chimerism is rare and usually uncovered through investigations of ambiguous genitalia or blood grouping or prenatal diagnosis. Most of the publications on placental chimerism are mainly case reports. There is no systematic search with sensitive techniques for placental chimerism in human.
Aim: This study was aimed to asses placental chimerism through two sensitive molecular techniques i.e., interphase fluorescent in situ hybridization and quantitative fluorescent PCR.
Material and methods: Placental chimerism was analyzed using X & Y dual color fluorescent in-situ hybridization onto 154 placentae from natural conceptions, obtained at termination of pregnancy between 7 to 16 weeks of gestation.
Results: Three cases of placental sex chromosome chimerism were observed (1.95%). Exclusion of maternal contamination and diagnosis was confirmed later by quantitative fluorescent PCR.
Conclusion: This finding indicates that placental chimerism in early human pregnancy is not rare.