Though often forgotten, the placenta has a huge role in baby’s health

Author: Elizabeth Quill / Source: Science News

Research in mice draws attention to the importance of the often-overlooked organ

TREE OF LIFE

I am not the first person who has considered composing poetry to the placenta.

One writer begins: “Oh Lady Placenta! What a life you lived in magenta.” Another almost coos to the “constant companion, womb pillow friend.” It might sound like odd inspiration for verse, but it’s entirely justified.

This vital organ, which is fully formed by about 12 weeks, nurtures a growing fetus throughout pregnancy, offering oxygen, nutrients and antibodies and eliminating waste. The placental cells forge a deep connection between mom and baby, a symbolic early step in a lifelong bond.

Recent research suggests a placenta that works properly might be even more important than previously thought. Myriam Hemberger of the Babraham Institute and the University of Cambridge, along with colleagues in England and Austria, looked at more than 100 genes in mice that are known to be necessary for an embryo to survive. More than two-thirds of those mouse genes were linked to problems with the placenta. And death of the embryo around days 10 to 15 —when, in mice, the placenta takes over from the yolk sac to supply nutrients — was almost always tied to these placental problems.

The study makes you wonder: How many birth defects in humans might have their roots in the placenta? “You cannot just look at the embryo,” says Susan Fisher of the University of California, San Francisco, who studies how placental cells invade the uterus early in pregnancy.

“You should work backward from the placenta.”

Both Hemberger and Fisher believe the placenta is underappreciated. I certainly thought much more about my little embryo turned fetus, growing from sesame seed to grape-sized, grapefruit and beyond, than I did about the disk of tissue supporting my baby-to-be. Fisher calls the placenta “the forgotten organ.”

In 2013, Tina Hesman Saey wrote a feature in Science News about new and growing efforts to understand the placenta. The New York Times published a story the following year, headlined “The Mysterious Tree of a Newborn’s Life.”

Then came the launch of the Human Placenta Project, an initiative of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Since 2015, the project has invested more than $65 million…

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