2023-05-01 15:28:41
Erasmus MC’s Placenta Lab has a device that can keep the placenta alive for 4 hours after birth. Scientists can observe the different processes in the placenta during the so-called perfusion. One of the possible applications is research into the behavior of medication in the blood vessels of the placenta.
Placenta as a source of information
One of the disorders that Broekhuizen research did, was preeclampsia. This is a dangerous condition in which the pregnant woman suffers from high blood pressure plus protein loss in the urine. “No biomarkers have yet been found with which we can predict which pregnant women have an increased risk of pre-eclampsia,” says Broekhuizen. Pregnant women with pre-eclampsia can become very seriously ill in a short time and end up in the ICU. In those cases, the baby must be born immediately. No treatment is yet available for this condition.
For her research, Broekhuizen looked at the effect of the existing drugs sildenafil and pentoxifyline. These are drugs known to improve blood flow to organs. “We investigated whether this also applies in the placenta. In healthy placentas, the blood supply indeed improved. But in placentas from women with pre-eclampsia, the drugs no longer had an effect on the blood supply,” says Broekhuizen.
That was an important finding and says something about what goes wrong in diseased placentas. It can be concluded that the processes that should ensure dilation of the vessels and thus improve the blood supply are so disturbed that the medication (sildenafil and pentoxifyline) no longer helps. “We can now investigate whether it makes sense to administer these medicines earlier. And we will see whether we can influence alternative processes that cause vasodilation with other existing medicines,” Broekhuizen continues.
Predictive value
Another area that Broekhuizen has researched is the possible predictive value that the placenta has for the health of the child. To this end, she studied placentas of children born with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, a hole in the diaphragm. As a result, they have an increased risk of high blood pressure in the lungs, or pulmonary hypertension.
Broekhuizen: “During pregnancy, the placenta functions as the child’s lungs,” explains Broekhuizen. ‘In children with such a congenital diaphragmatic hernia, we see that the placental vessels function worse than the vessels in placentas of healthy pregnancies.’
Continue research
In the past, research has already been done into the consequences of congenital diaphragmatic hernia on the lungs of children. “The striking thing is that we see the same processes going wrong in the placentas. We do not yet know whether these children actually develop pulmonary hypertension. And we do not yet know whether the diaphragmatic hernia is caused by the malfunctioning of the placenta, or vice versa. But these are interesting data to explore further,” says Broekhuizen.
Partly for this reason, Michelle continues her research. Thanks to a subsidy, she can now also hire a PhD student for this. In addition, the Placenta Lab already works closely with the Pathology department. There, tissue sections of placentas are made. This includes women whose baby died shortly before or during childbirth.
Dr. Michelle Broekhuizen recently obtained her PhD for her research. That’s why he wrote it thesis (pdf) Placental Origins of Health & Disease; Therapeutic opportunities.
Another placental innovation was announced earlier this year. TechMed researchers Professor Jutta Arens and Professor Dimitrios Stamatialis, along with partners from academia and industry from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Ireland and Canada, are developing an artificial placenta called ArtPlac.
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