Significant association between circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis in preterm birth:A 23-year retrospective cohort study

Aim:circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis separately are associated with unfavourable clinical outcomes. We aimed to determine the prevalence and define whether an association exists between the three abnormalities. Methods: 16,042 placenta pathology reports between 1997 and 2020 from a tertiary care centre in the Netherlands were retrospectively analysed. For the statistical analysis, the chi-square test and bootstrapping were used to evaluate an association. Results: In our cohort the prevalence of circumvallate placenta is 2.2 %, placental abruption cases 4.0 % and acute chorioamnionitis 20.6 %. We observed a statistically significant association between all three placental abnormalities: circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis. In addition, there was also an association between circumvallate placenta and acute chorioamnionitis. Conclusion: Our results show that combined presence of circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis are associated in preterm birth (p = 0.001). A remarkable finding is that the combination of all three abnormalities (circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis) was not observed in term pregnancies &gt;37 weeks.</p

Seasonal variations in the functional performance of industrial low-moisture part-skim mozzarella over a 1.5-year period

Seventy-five blocks of low-moisture part-skim (LMPS) Mozzarella cheese were procured from an industrial cheese plant, and the relationships between the physicochemical and functional properties were evaluated during refrigerated storage. In total, cheeses were obtained from 1 cheese vat on 7 different production dates, at two- to four monthly intervals, over a 1.5 year period; all cheeses were made using a standard recipe. The cheeses were held at 4°C for 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 d and assayed for composition, primary proteolysis, serum distribution, texture profile analysis, heat-induced changes in viscoelastic behavior, cheese extensibility and melt characteristics. The results demonstrated a substantial increase in serum uptake by the calcium-phosphate para-casein matrix between 1 and 16 d of storage with a concomitant improvement in the functional performance of the cheese. Extending the storage time to 32 d resulted in further changes in the functional quality, concurrent with ongoing increases in protein hydration and primary proteolysis. Differences in the measured characteristics between the cheeses obtained on different sampling occasions were evident. Principal component analysis separated the cheeses based on their variance in functional performance, which was found to be correlated mainly with the calcium content of the cheese. The results indicate that the manufacturing process should be tightly controlled to minimize variation in calcium content, and enhance the quality consistency of the cheese

Inflammatory placental lesions are specifically observed in healthy oocyte donation pregnancies with extreme fetal-maternal incompatibility

Introduction: Oocyte donation (OD) pregnancy is a risk factor for pre-eclampsia (PE). Due to a higher extent of fetal-maternal human leukocyte antigens (HLA) mismatching in OD pregnancies compared to naturally conceived (NC) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) pregnancies, the immune response in OD placentas is probably divergent and affects clinical outcomes. We hypothesized that placental pathology varies among diverse pregnancy conditions and is related to fetal-maternal HLA incompatibility. Methods: Placental lesions were scored in four patient groups: OD-PE (n = 16), OD-healthy (n = 37), NC-PE (n = 45), and IVF-healthy (n = 17). All combinations were genotyped for HLA-A, -B, -C, -DR, and -DQ to calculate fetal-maternal HLA mismatches. Placentas showing chronic deciduitis with plasma cells were immunofluorescently stained with CD138 and the anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-10 (IL-10).Results: The distribution and severity of placental lesions varied among groups. The OD-healthy group had the highest inflammation score and greatest extent of chronic deciduitis with plasma cells (p &lt; 0.05). However, the majority of CD138+ plasma cells (90%) in OD-healthy group expressed IL-10, in contrast to the OD-PE group (58%). The OD-healthy group was separated into semi-allogeneic (≤5 HLA mismatches) and fully allogeneic (&gt;5 mismatches) subgroups. The elevated inflammatory pathology score and chronic deciduitis with plasma cells were found more often in the HLA-class-I fully allogeneic OD-healthy group than the IVF-healthy group (p &lt; 0.05). Discussion: Placental inflammatory lesions are most often present in uncomplicated OD pregnancies. Immune cells that infiltrate these lesions might play an immunosuppressive role to protect OD pregnancies from complications when facing a higher extent of fetal-maternal HLA mismatching.</p

An order-theoretic characterization of the Howard-Bachmann-hierarchy

In this article we provide an intrinsic characterization of the famous Howard-Bachmann ordinal in terms of a natural well-partial-ordering by showing that this ordinal can be realized as a maximal order type of a class of generalized trees with respect to a homeomorphic embeddability relation. We use our calculations to draw some conclusions about some corresponding subsystems of second order arithmetic. All these subsystems deal with versions of light-face Π₁¹-comprehension

Significant association between circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis in preterm birth: A 23-year retrospective cohort study

Aim: circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis separately are associated with unfavourable clinical outcomes. We aimed to determine the prevalence and define whether an association exists between the three abnormalities. Methods: 16,042 placenta pathology reports between 1997 and 2020 from a tertiary care centre in the Netherlands were retrospectively analysed. For the statistical analysis, the chi-square test and bootstrapping were used to evaluate an association. Results: In our cohort the prevalence of circumvallate placenta is 2.2 %, placental abruption cases 4.0 % and acute chorioamnionitis 20.6 %. We observed a statistically significant association between all three placental abnormalities: circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis. In addition, there was also an association between circumvallate placenta and acute chorioamnionitis. Conclusion: Our results show that combined presence of circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis are associated in preterm birth (p = 0.001). A remarkable finding is that the combination of all three abnormalities (circumvallate placenta, placental abruption and acute chorioamnionitis) was not observed in term pregnancies >37 weeks

Identification of a unique intervillous cellular signature in chronic histiocytic intervillositis

Introduction: Chronic histiocytic intervillositis (CHI) is a rare histopathological lesion in the placenta characterized by an infiltrate of CD68+ cells in the intervillous space. CHI is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage, fetal growth restriction, and (late) intrauterine fetal death. The adverse pregnancy outcomes and a variable recurrence rate of 25–100% underline its clinical relevance. The pathophysiologic mechanism of CHI is unclear, but it appears to be immunologically driven. The aim of this study was to obtain a better understanding of the phenotype of the cellular infiltrate in CHI. Method: We used imaging mass cytometry to achieve in-depth visualization of the intervillous maternal immune cells and investigated their spatial orientation in situ in relation to the fetal syncytiotrophoblast. Results: We found three phenotypically distinct CD68+HLA-DR+CD38+ cell clusters that were unique for CHI. Additionally, syncytiotrophoblast cells in the vicinity of these CD68+HLA-DR+CD38+ cells showed decreased expression of the immunosuppressive enzyme CD39. Discussion: The current results provide novel insight into the phenotype of CD68+ cells in CHI. The identification of unique CD68+ cell clusters will allow more detailed analysis of their function and could result in novel therapeutic targets for CHI

Identification of a unique intervillous cellular signature in chronic histiocytic intervillositis

Introduction: Chronic histiocytic intervillositis (CHI) is a rare histopathological lesion in the placenta characterized by an infiltrate of CD68+ cells in the intervillous space. CHI is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage, fetal growth restriction, and (late) intrauterine fetal death. The adverse pregnancy outcomes and a variable recurrence rate of 25-100% underline its clinical relevance. The pathophysiologic mechanism of CHI is unclear, but it appears to be immunologically driven. The aim of this study was to obtain a better understanding of the phenotype of the cellular infiltrate in CHI.Method: We used imaging mass cytometry to achieve in-depth visualization of the intervillous maternal immune cells and investigated their spatial orientation in situ in relation to the fetal syncytiotrophoblast.Results: We found three phenotypically distinct CD68+HLA-DR+CD38+ cell clusters that were unique for CHI. Additionally, syncytiotrophoblast cells in the vicinity of these CD68+HLA-DR+CD38+ cells showed decreased expression of the immunosuppressive enzyme CD39.Discussion: The current results provide novel insight into the phenotype of CD68+ cells in CHI. The identification of unique CD68+ cell clusters will allow more detailed analysis of their function and could result in novel therapeutic targets for CHI.Research into fetal development and medicin

Combined loss of HLA I and HLA II expression is more common in the non-GCB type of diffuse large B cell lymphoma

As an immune escape mechanism tumor cells may downregulate expression of Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA). Loss of HLA class I and class II has been described in various subtypes of diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), including the not otherwise specified (NOS) subgroup. 1,2 We analyzed HLA class I and class II expression in DLBCL not otherwise specified (NOS) to investigate whether there is an association between HLA expression, cell of origin (COO) and the recently reported FOXP1 expression in non-GCB DLBCL. 3 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved