How the placenta functions during pregnancy is critically important for the development of that baby. If the placenta\u2019s not functioning well the baby will not get sufficient oxygen, it will get stressed because of that and that\u2019s one mechanism where it can alter its physiology to really deal with living in an adverse environment until it\u2019s born. So I think the placenta is a really important organ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And more and more now, we are starting to clinically look at the development of that placenta, to get clues as to whether that pregnancy is going to have no complications or it might have some complications. In certain cases we know that poor placentation directly affects the clinical course of pregnancy. In certain cases if the placenta is not able to support the transfer of nutrients to the baby, the baby\u2019s growth will be restricted. And so when the baby\u2019s born it will be smaller than it should\u2019ve been. We know that that\u2019s a risk for the baby. We know that some babies will be so growth restricted they might die in utero itself or if they\u2019re born growth restricted, may have a number of challenges as they grow. We know if the placenta is unable to remodel the mother\u2019s uterine vasculature, that can lead to a condition called preeclampsia in which the mother has systemic vascular problems; has problems with coagulation, has problems with high blood pressure and has problems with spilling protein into her urine. All of these are a sign of a systemic vascular problem in the mother. And this actually can be life threatening for the mother, and life threatening for the baby. You can\u2019t change the placenta, so in those conditions, the only solution is to actually electively deliver the baby early, in which case, while the baby is out of this hostile environment, it is a premature baby, facing the challenges that it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How the placenta functions during pregnancy is critically important for the development of that baby. If the placenta\u2019s not functioning well the baby will not get sufficient oxygen, it will get stressed because of that and that\u2019s one mechanism where it can alter its physiology to really deal with living in an adverse environment until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5254","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5255,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5254\/revisions\/5255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}