Interesting Question for the Psychiatrists and Geneticists Out There

[strawbjt]

I have always wanted to ask these two closely related questions; especially since my Psychiatrist told me that he had never heard of any situation even remotely close to mine and/or of any studies related at all to it.

I am now a 54-year-old man with ADD. My symptoms are mainly "tactile" and "attention" related -- not "hyperactivity-type" AD/HD. My sister is 52, and never (except see story below) had any history of ADD. In 1999, she was diagnosed with CML Leukemia. I was a perfect DNA match for her and a Bone Marrow Transplant was done a in October, 1999.

About a year or so after the transplant (she is now considered "cured" - even better than "in remission"), she started to mention to me that she was having the same "tactile" kind of ADD symptoms as I do -- such as not being able to wear wool/other "itchy/scratchy" clothing, hating the feeling of shirt tags on her neck, hating the feeling of zippers on her upper body, feeling itchy after she gets a hair cut, constantly messing with her shoes and/or needing to constantly adjust/pull-up her socks/stockings, etc.

Interestingly, my son (now 24) was diagnosed with ADD with similar symptomology as a child. I think that both my father and my paternal grandfather also had and have (only my father is still living) some type of ADD-related condition -- as to both of them an inability to control emotion; especially anger.

And, even though my sister's husband has no family history of ADD and my sister was left infertile from the Bone Marrow Transplant -- with the result that she and her husband had to use a surrogate egg from an unrelated donor (also with no known family ADD history) that was fertilized in vitro with her husband's sperm and then implanted -- her son (now 8) has a very bad case of ADD and Confrontational Disorder!!! Go figure that last part out!!

So, based on my Psychiatrist's comments to me, I have always wanted to ask:

1) is there any research material "out there" and/or does any medical professional know of any cases where, after a Bone Marrow Transplant from an identical HLA-matched sibling, the Bone Marrow recipient has gotten ADD, because of the "transformation" to being my "genetic twin"? If there is no knowledge on this topic, then I think it would make for a VERY interesting factual framework for a clinical study and/or a narrowly-focused research project (even a Doctoral Thesis)? We already know about the ADD link from generation to generation (especially I think -- as is true with me -- Paternally). If it could be shown that the genetic based linkage could also result literally "out of nowhere" after a Bone Marrow Transplant (especially male to female) then I think that this could be a very important part of the still-to-be-learned manner of ADD inheritance, and possibly similar "mental conditions," as well? (I obviously hate to use the term "mental condition," as we all do).

2) Could there ever, possibly, be any link between the Bone Marrow Transplant and my Nephew's ADD, etc.? This seems so remote, because, even though my sister has had ADD symptoms ever since a while after the Transplant, the egg was not hers and her husband's family has absolutely no ADD history at all? Her pregnancy was also about 8-9 years after she was deemed "cured" and not only "in deep remission." Could my nephew possibly get ADD just because (EVEN assuming that my sister somehow got it after the Transplant from me somehow), my sister's blood that sustained my nephew in vitro was genetically identical to mine?

[Caltic]

I can only offer an anecdote in the form of studies and reported cases showing after an FMT (fecal microbiata transplant, taking feces from one person/creature and inserting it into another to influence the microbiome of their digestive tract) mice that displayed confident behavior who received feces of mice who were anxious, had a drastic increase in anxious behavior after the procedure. A similar effect in humans that I know of has been seen in the form of an overweight but otherwise healthy patient transplanting their feces into their skinny but unhealthy gut microbiome mother, resulting in the mother gaining weight despite the same diet and amount of exercise prior to the procedure.

I know it's a stretch and not even within the same part of the body but boiled down to "take thing from person A and transplant it into person B" it's definitely within the realm of possibility. I'd look further into the realm of people adopting behaviors or neurological tendencies of donors after a transplant rather than narrowing it down to bone marrow. I can say with certainty though that bone marrow contains plenty of your DNA, and your DNA can be damaged/altered throughout the course of living.