Placental programming of chronic diseases, cancer and lifespan: A review

Developmental biology: Support mothers to secure future public health

“…These observations come mainly from work on animals, but also from cohort studies relating measurements of mothers' placentas at the time of birth to their diets and the birth weights of their babies. Individuals, who as fetuses were nourished by placentas that are long for their breadth, for example, are up to twice as likely to develop colorectal cancer and, if a first child, up to three times as likely to develop coronary heart disease compared with those who had been nourished by placentas of average size and shape 6 .…”

Placental Volumetry by 2-D Sonography with a New Mathematical Formula: Prospective Study on the Shell of a Spherical Sector Model

“…In addition, a disproportionally small placenta is characteristic for fetal death (Haavaldsen et al 2013;Hasegawa et al 2011) and growth retarded fetuses have often small placentas (Almog et al 2011). An unfavorable placental and fetal growth in utero predispose to diabetes, coronary heart diseases and hypertension at subsequent ages (Barker and Thornburg 2013). Salafia et al (2006) suggested that large placenta relative to the fetal weight might represent placental insufficiency with reduced ability to maintain fetal growth.…”

Placental endoplasmic reticulum stress and acidosis: relevant aspects in gestational diabetes

“…The identification of placental endoplasmic reticulum stress and unfolded protein responses in GDM patients is relevant in the search for new biomarkers of adverse intrauterine programming. Indeed, there is clear evidence that impaired placental growth and function are related to the induction of fetal adaptations that would lead later to diseases in the offspring [9][10][11]. Considering the relationship between endoplasmic reticulum stress, oxidative stress, angiogenesis and the induction of a proinflammatory environment, efforts to understand the role of these processes during development would improve our understanding of the intrauterine programming of adult diseases [12,13].…”