Bocking - placental roles

The placenta is an amazing organ. The placenta is a very large organ, right? It can be you know up to a pound, that sort of size. So, and this serves many functions. And one of those functions is in gas exchange. So the mother’s oxygen levels; oxygen has to be transferred to the fetus, so the fetus can receive oxygen and vice versa, it has to be able to excrete carbon dioxide into the mother’s bloodstream and then the mother can excrete that. So, that’s the way the placenta acts like the lung. But the placenta actually does much more than that. And, it provides the nutrients, so it’s the GI system if you like for the fetus, although it has its own GI system. But it provides the nutrients; glucose, amino acids, free fatty acids; all of the nutrients that the fetus needs to grow and develop and mature are provided by that placenta. So oxygen delivery, nutrient delivery, it’s an incredibly impressive endocrine organ as well, secretes all sorts of hormones; placental steroid hormones, protein hormones; that all also affect not just the mother but also affect the fetus so that’s another important function of the placenta. Also has an important immune function. It serves as a way of providing a barrier for rejection for example of the fetus by the mother. So, it provides that. So really, four major functions that the placenta fulfills.