The Placenta is a Temporary Yet Crucial Organ

You may lose your placenta at birth, but new research suggests it influences the rest of your life.

Hiya

Parents are great, kids too, but I’ve never had the desire to become a parent by creating a child. Pregnancy is one experience I’m all too happy to skip, and perhaps because of that, I’ve never thought much about the placenta. I mean, I’m well aware of the incredible mind-bending transformation a female’s body undergoes throughout pregnancy. So, I suppose I just lumped the existence of the placenta in with the experience as a whole.

However, it turns out the placenta is way more fascinating than I ever imagined. Especially since new research suggests it influences our health for decades after exiting the womb.

The Placenta

We all have a placenta while forming in the womb. It’s a blob of tissue made from an embryo’s cells that looks a bit like a 10-inch (20 cm) wide mushroom. It begins to develop within about ten days of conception and is basically solely responsible for taking care of us until birth.

Your placenta provided you with nutrients and oxygen, removed waste products, and generally protected you while you formed. The placenta single-handedly fulfills all the tasks that our organs do after we’re born, including our kidneys, liver, and lungs. All while overseeing the complete remodeling of almost 150 coiled blood vessels in the uterus, called spiral arteries, that provide the placenta with blood.

In addition to juggling and coordinating these jobs, the placenta is also the intermediary between the parent and the fetus. In the process, it contains the DNA of the fetus and convinces the parents’ immune system not to attack it but instead to live in harmony. A cellular geneticist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Roser Vento-Tormo, explains:

“The fetus creates the placenta which surrounds and protects it, and establishes communication between itself and its mother’s uterus in which it is developing.”

It’s almost as if the placenta is an overworked employee at an understaffed company, and such stress and multitasking can result in something going wrong. Except when something interferes with one of the placenta’s duties, the results can create life-threatening conditions.

When Things Go Wrong

Pre-eclampsia can occur after about the 20-week mark of pregnancy. It’s a dangerous blood pressure condition known to complicate about 8 percent of pregnancies worldwide and is responsible for 15 percent of preterm births in the United States each year. Unchecked, this condition can cause damage to the pregnant parent’s liver, kidneys, heart, and brain and starve the fetus of oxygen. The cause of pre-eclampsia is unknown, but experts believe it’s related to the placenta.

Then there is placenta accreta, a life-threatening condition that occurs when a newly formed placenta doesn’t stop growing. Sometimes, the placenta will push through the uterine wall and press into the parent’s other organs, like the intestines and bladder. At the time of birth, the placenta can’t detach itself from the parent’s body like it’s supposed to, which often results in a tremendous amount of bleeding and threatens the life of the parent.

These two examples are just the beginning. So far, it’s estimated that issues with the placenta may explain as many as 66 percent of preterm births. Further, research over the last two decades has linked preterm births with long-term health issues for both the parent and child.