Placenta on toast? Could we derive benefits from ingesting afterbirth?

Almost all non-human mammals eat placenta for good reasons. Are we missing something? A paper by neuroscientists at the University at Buffalo and Buffalo State College suggests that ingestion of components of afterbirth or placenta -- placentophagia -- may offer benefits to human mothers and perhaps to non-mothers and males. 

They say this possibility does not warrant the wholesale ingestion of afterbirth, for some very good reasons, but that it deserves further study. 

Mark Kristal, PhD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UB, directs the graduate program in behavioral neuroscience, and has studied placentophagia for more than 40 years. He is recognized as a principle expert in the field. 

Kristal's article "Placentophagia in Human and Nonhuman Mammals: Causes and Consequences," will be published in the March 30 issue of the journal Ecology of Food and Nutrition, which will be devoted to the subject of placentophagia. 

Kristal's co-authors are Jean M. DiPirro, PhD, associate professor, Department of Psychology, Buffalo State College, and Alexis C. Thompson, PhD, research associate professor, UB Department of Psychology and a research scientist in the UB Research Institute on Addictions. 

They point out that the benefits of placenta ingestion (as well as the ingestion of amniotic fluid) by non-human mammalian mothers are significant. It provokes an increase in mother-infant interaction, for instance, and increases the effects of pregnancy-mediated analgesia in the delivering mother. It also potentiates opioid circuits in the maternal brain that facilitate the onset of caretaking behavior, and suppresses postpartum pseudopregnancy, thereby increasing the possibilities for fertilization. 

"Human childbirth is fraught with additional problems for which there are no practical nonhuman animal models," says Kristal, citing postpartum depression, failure to bond and maternal hostility toward the infant. 

He says ingested afterbirth may contain components that ameliorate these problems, but although there have been many anecdotal claims made for human placentophagia, the issue has not been tested empirically. 

"If such studies are undertaken," he says, "the results, if positive, will be medically relevant. If the results are negative, speculations and recommendations will persist, as it is not possible to prove the negative." 

Kristal says there is a current fad of ingesting encapsulated placenta, which mirrors unverified reports in the 1960s and 1970s of people in back-to-nature communes cooking and eating human placentas. The upsurge in recent anecdotal reports of the benefits of taking placenta by new mothers, irrespective of dose, method of preparation, or time course, suggests more of a placebo effect than a medicinal effect. 

"People will do anything," Kristal says, "but we shouldn't read too much significance into reports of such exceptions, even if they are accurate, because they are neither reliable nor valid studies. My own studies found no evidence of the routine practice of placentophagia in other cultures, findings supported by a recent extensive study by anthropologists at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 

"The more challenging anthropological question is," he says, "'Why don't humans engage in placentophagia as a biological imperative as so many other mammals apparently do?' because we clearly do not do this as a matter of course today and apparently never have. Perhaps for humans, there is a greater adaptive advantage to not eating the placenta." The paper discusses some possibilities in this regard. 

"Whether or not we learn why humans do not do this, it is important for us to search for the medicinal or behavioral benefits of components of afterbirth for the same reasons that we search for plant-based medicinal substances," Kristal says. 

"The outcome of such a quest need not be an exhortation for women to eat afterbirth, but for scientists to isolate and identify the molecule or molecules that produce the beneficial effect and use it to design pharmacological tools," he says. 

He adds, "In the case of Placental Opioid-Enhancing Factor or POEF and enhanced opioid-mediated analgesia, for instance, we have determined through earlier studies that not only is the effect nonspecific in regard to species, but it is also nonspecific in regard to sex. 

"That means that although males, who in all probability do not make the molecule, have the ability to respond to it," Kristal says. 

Source: University at Buffalo [March 27, 2012]

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Healthy aging begins in the womb

Ageing is a complex process involving physical, psychological, and environmental factors. Scientists believe that ageing can be programmed in the womb. One example of stress during pregnancy is the administration of glucocorticoids, i. e. synthetic stress hormones to accelerate fetal lung maturation in premature labor to allow breathing after birth. Could exposure to these stress hormones have an effect on health later in life? 

"We know from previous studies that children whose mothers received glucocorticoids during pregnancy are less stress tolerant and have more concentration problems than their peers," reported Professor Matthias Schwab, the Neurologist heading the project. "Stress signal regulation is permanently disturbed and appears to lead to early ageing, in particular, of the brain", he added. 

The scientists examine several risk groups. One consists of 10-year-olds born at the University Hospital Jena whose mothers had treatment with glucocorticoids during pregnancy. Two other groups are being followed up by psychologists at the University of Leuven in Belgium and include two-year-olds and 25-year-olds whose mothers suffered from stress during pregnancy. 

"A unique group studied at the Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam includes persons born in Holland during the Dutch „Hunger Winter", of 1944/45," reported Prof. Schwab. 

Scientists involved in the project use state-of-the art neuropsychological, neurophysiological, and MRI methods to analyse and compare biological and real age of the brain. The biotechnology companies Life Length in Madrid and Biocrates in Innsbruck measure biological age in chromosomes and screen blood samples to determine metabolic blood markers of age. 

"Environmental factors such as exposure to stress hormones or malnutrition during pregnancy change the readout of genetic information permanently," reported Matthias Platzer, Head of Genome Analysis at the Leibniz Institute for Age Research in Jena. 

"These epigenetic processes significantly change stress sensitivity for the rest of life," explained Prof Schwab. „Increased stress sensitivity makes one vulnerable to age-related diseases such as stroke and depression," he added. 

In experimental studies, researchers aim to determine the period during pregnancy in which the brain is particularly vulnerable to stress. An important aspect of the research also involves studying a group of primates kept in Texas for possible translation of the findings to human subjects. 

Understanding the biology of healthy ageing is desperately needed due to the worldwide ageing population and the economic costs of treating age-related diseases. 

"Environmental influences during life in the womb are early determinants for life-long good health and may be a target for preventive measures against early-ageing and age-related diseases," explained Prof. Schwab.  

Source: Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena [March 08, 2012]

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How pregnancy changes a woman's brain

We know a lot about the links between a pregnant mother’s health, behavior, and moods and her baby’s cognitive and psychological development once it is born. But how does pregnancy change a mother’s brain? “Pregnancy is a critical period for central nervous system development in mothers,” says psychologist Laura M. Glynn of Chapman University. 

“Yet we know virtually nothing about it.” Glynn and her colleague Curt A. Sandman, of University of the California Irvine, are doing something about that. Their review of the literature in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, discusses the theories and findings that are starting to fill what Glynn calls “a significant gap in our understanding of this critical stage of most women’s lives.” 

At no other time in a woman’s life does she experience such massive hormonal fluctuations as during pregnancy. Research suggests that the reproductive hormones may ready a woman’s brain for the demands of motherhood—helping her becomes less rattled by stress and more attuned to her baby’s needs. Although the hypothesis remains untested, Glynn surmises this might be why moms wake up when the baby stirs while dads snore on. Other studies confirm the truth in a common complaint of pregnant women: “Mommy Brain,” or impaired memory before and after birth. “There may be a cost” of these reproduction-related cognitive and emotional changes, says Glynn, “but the benefit is a more sensitive, effective mother.” 

The article reviews research that refines earlier findings on the effects of the prenatal environment on the baby. For instance, evidence is accumulating to show that it’s not prenatal adversity on its own—say, maternal malnourishment or depression—that presents risks for a baby. Congruity between life in utero and life on the outside may matter more. A fetus whose mother is malnourished adapts to scarcity and will cope better with a dearth of food once it’s born—but could become obese if it eats normally. Timing is critical too: maternal anxiety early in gestation takes a toll on the baby’s cognitive development; the same high levels of stress hormones late in pregnancy enhance it. 

Just as Mom permanently affects her fetus, new science suggests that the fetus does the same for Mom. Fetal movement, even when the mother is unaware of it, raises her heart rate and her skin conductivity, signals of emotion—and perhaps of pre-natal preparation for mother-child bonding. Fetal cells pass through the placenta into the mother’s bloodstream. “It’s exciting to think about whether those cells are attracted to certain regions in the brain” that may be involved in optimizing maternal behavior, says Glynn. 

Glynn cautions that most research on the maternal brain has been conducted with rodents, whose pregnancies differ enormously from women’s; more research on human mothers is needed. But she is optimistic that a more comprehensive picture of the persisting brain changes wrought by pregnancy will yield interventions to help at-risk mothers do better by their babies and themselves. 

Source: Association for Psychological Science [December 20, 2011]

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New Findings May Help Explain High Blood Pressure in Pregnancy

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have discovered that the infiltration of white blood cells into an expectant mother’s blood vessels may explain high blood pressure in pregnancy. 

The findings could lead to novel avenues of treatment for pregnant women with preeclampsia based on regulation of white blood cells called neutrophilis, their products or their cellular effects. 

Preeclampsia is one of the most significant health problems in pregnancy and a leading cause worldwide of both premature delivery and of sickness and death of the mother and baby. Research has shown that the blood vessels of women with preeclampsia are dysfunctional, but the cause of preeclampsia is not known, and the only treatment is delivery of the baby. 

In a study published online in the October issue of Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association, the VCU team reported that an infiltration of white blood cells may be responsible for the high blood pressure observed in preeclampsia. These white blood cells release reactive oxygen species that the team showed enhance the reactivity of the mother’s blood vessels to hypertensive hormones by activating the RhoA kinase pathway in the blood vessels. Read the study here. 

According to corresponding author Scott W. Walsh, Ph.D., professor in the VCU Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the RhoA kinase pathway is an intracellular mechanism in the smooth muscle cells of blood vessels that makes the blood vessels more reactive to hormones that increase blood pressure. 

“In other words, the blood vessels contract more easily to the hormones so blood pressure increases even though the hormone levels do not increase,” said Walsh. 

“These findings may explain the enhanced blood pressure response of women who develop preeclampsia, which was first described almost 40 years ago,” he said. 

Walsh said some potential treatments on the horizon for clinical studies are monoclonal antibodies that could prevent the infiltration of the white blood cells, and selective RhoA kinase inhibitors that could prevent the enhanced reactivity of the mother’s blood vessels. 

Source: Virginia Commonwealth University [October 31, 2011]

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