Placenta Research May Help Explain Pregnancy Loss
Content warning: This interview includes discussion of miscarriage and pregnancy loss, and may be triggering for some listeners.
The placenta is an incredible body part. It’s the only organ grown temporarily, created during pregnancy and discarded after birth. It has the enormous job of supporting the growth of a fetus, protecting it from infection and inflammation. When something goes wrong with the placenta, it can result in the loss of a baby.
For something that can be so devastating to expectant parents, miscarriages are incredibly normal. Of the 5 million pregnancies each year in the United States, about 1 million end in miscarriage, categorized as a loss before 20 weeks of gestation. About 20,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth during the later stages of gestation.
Often, after a pregnancy loss, doctors tell parents that the cause is unexplained. This can lead to feelings of failure and guilt, even though pregnancy loss is almost always out of a person’s control.
Dr. Harvey Kliman, director of the Yale School of Medicine’s Reproductive and Placental Research Unit, has dedicated his career to better understanding the placenta and its relationship to pregnancy loss. Dr. Kliman and his team recently analyzed 1,256 placentas that resulted in pregnancy loss. They learned that 90% of these losses could be explained by conditions such as a small or misshapen placenta.
Dr. Kliman joins guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about his research, and the importance of studying the placenta as a way to better understand what leads to miscarriage and stillbirth.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Available Results
Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.
Choose Template
Pick the result you want. You can review provider and model before generating.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Scientific findings, mechanisms, studies, hypotheses, and the limits of the evidence discussed.
Technologies, AI models, technical methods, capabilities, limitations, and adoption implications.
Investment theses, assets, catalysts, valuation reasoning, time horizons, and risks.
Chronologies, actors, causes, consequences, turning points, and competing historical interpretations.
Policies, proposals, stakeholders, arguments, implementation constraints, and predicted effects.
Career paths, skills, hiring signals, workplace decisions, transitions, and limitations of the advice.
Behavioral mechanisms, biases, motivation, habits, emotions, interventions, and evidence limitations.
Economic mechanisms, incentives, indicators, market structure, forecasts, and uncertainty.
Leadership principles, team systems, organizational design, culture, feedback, and failure modes.
Audience, positioning, messaging, acquisition, retention, experiments, metrics, and failed approaches.
Teaching methods, learning strategies, practice, feedback, assessment, and effectiveness evidence.
Theses, premises, arguments, objections, values, thought experiments, and unresolved questions.
Communication patterns, conflict, boundaries, expectations, repair methods, and contextual limitations.
Books, papers, authors, courses, and other learning resources mentioned in the episode.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
Memorable statements and important claims with attribution and source context.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.