Altered placental phenotype and increased risk of placental pathology in fetal spina bifida: A matched case-control study.

Introduction: Spina bifida (SB) remains one of the most common congenital anomalies and associates with significant comorbidities in the fetus, which may, in part, be driven by placental maldevelopment. We hypothesised that placental pathologies would be more prevalent in fetuses with SB compared to fetuses without congenital anomalies.

Methods: Placental pathology and transcriptome were evaluated for fetuses with isolated open SB born preterm (cases; n = 12) and control fetuses without congenital anomalies (n = 22) born at full term (FT) or preterm (PT).

Gestational Age, Infection, and Suboptimal Maternal Prepregnancy BMI Independently Associate with Placental Histopathology in a Cohort of Pregnancies without Major Maternal Comorbidities.

The placenta undergoes morphological and functional adaptations to adverse exposures during pregnancy. The effects ofsuboptimal maternal body mass index (BMI), preterm birth, and infection on placental histopathological phenotypes are not yet well understood, despite the association between these conditions and poor offspring outcomes. We hypothesized that suboptimal maternal prepregnancy BMI and preterm birth (with and without infection) would associate with altered placental maturity and morphometry, and that altered placental maturity would associate with poor birth outcomes.

Altered placental immune cell composition and gene expression with isolated fetal spina bifida.

Problem: Fetal spina bifida (SB) is more common in pregnant people with folate deficiency or anomalies of folate metabolism. It is also known that fetuses with SB have a higher risk of low birthweight, a condition that is typically placental-mediated. We therefore hypothesized that fetal SB would associate with altered expression of key placental folate transporters and an increase in Hofbauer cells (HBCs), which are folate-dependent placental macrophages.

Automated detection of microscopic placental features indicative of maternal vascular malperfusion using machine learning.

Introduction: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) and fetal growth restriction (FGR) are common obstetrical complications, often with pathological features of maternal vascular malperfusion (MVM) in the placenta. Currently, clinical placental pathology methods involve a manual visual examination of histology sections, a practice that can be resource-intensive and demonstrates moderate-to-poor inter-pathologist agreement on diagnostic outcomes, dependant on the degree of pathologist sub-specialty training.

Methods: This study aims to apply machine learning (ML) feature extraction methods to classify digital images of placental histopathology specimens, collected from cases of HDP [pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH), preeclampsia (PE), PE + FGR], normotensive FGR, and healthy pregnancies, according to the presence or absence of MVM lesions.

Placental Pathology and Pregnancy Complications.

Placental pathology assessment following delivery provides an opportunity to identify the presence and type of disease that can mediate major obstetrical complications, especially in cases where the fetus is growth-restricted, born premature, or stillborn, or if the mother suffers from severe hypertensive morbidities [...