Glucose is a major energy substrate for the fetus, including liver, heart, and brain metabolism. The umbilical vein (UV) blood flow supplies the fetal liver directly from the placenta, whereas a fraction is shunted via ductus venosus (DV) to the fetal systemic circulation bypassing the fetal liver. We hypothesized UV glucose concentration to be a major regulator of the distribution of glucose supply between the fetal liver and DV, and explored the influence of maternal metabolic status on this distribution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Obstet Gynecol Scand
August 2020
Objectives: The extent to which the human term fetus utilizes cholesterol released from the placenta has remained elusive. Our aims were to estimate the net mass of cholesterol taken up by the uteroplacental unit, released by the placenta and taken up by the fetus. Thereby we aimed to explore the maternal-fetal cholesterol transfer and hypothesized that maternal levels and uteroplacental uptake were correlated to the fetal uptake of cholesterol.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTaurine is regarded as an essential amino acid in utero, and fetal taurine supply is believed to rely solely on placental transfer from maternal plasma. Despite its potential role in intrauterine growth restriction and other developmental disturbances, human in vivo studies of taurine transfer between the maternal, placental, and fetal compartments are scarce. We studied placental transfer of taurine in uncomplicated human term pregnancies in vivo in a cross-sectional study of 179 mother-fetus pairs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The current concepts of human fetal-placental amino acid exchange and metabolism are mainly based on animal-, in vitro- and ex vivo models. We aimed to determine and assess the paired relationships between concentrations and arteriovenous differences of 19 amino acids on the maternal and fetal sides of the human placenta in a large study sample.
Methods: This cross-sectional in vivo study included 179 healthy women with uncomplicated term pregnancies.