Placenta can indicate how body responds to opioids during pregnancy





“Many pregnant women are being prescribed opioids—in particular OxyContin, or oxycodone—to help with the pain they can experience during pregnancy, and this can lead to opioid use disorders,” Rosenfeld said. “Many women also don’t want to admit to taking these drugs, and we know that children born from mothers who have taken opioids during pregnancy experience post-birth conditions, such as low-birth weight. But, so far no one has studied the potential ramifications of opioid use during fetal life. Thus, we focused on the placenta because it is the main communication organ between the mother and her unborn child.”

Previous studies examining these effects have used human cell cultures, but this is one of the first studies to use an animal model to examine how developmental exposure to these drugs affect the conceptus. In the study, Rosenfeld and her colleagues focused on how a mother’s use of oxycodone during her pregnancy can affect a mouse’s placenta. Mouse and human placentas are similar in many ways, including having placenta-specific cells in direct contact with a mother’s blood. They found the use of this drug during pregnancy can negatively affect the placenta’s structure, such as reducing and killing cells that produce by-products needed for normal brain development. In addition, Rosenfeld said their findings show specific differences in genetic expressions between female and male placentas in response to maternal oxycodone exposure.



“This also allows us to easily study other regions of the body, especially the brain of exposed offspring, that would be affected by taking these opioids,” Rosenfeld said. “We can then use this information to help epidemiologists identify behaviors that people should be looking at in children whose mothers have taken these opioids.”


Rosenfeld’s research is an example of an early step in translational medicine, or research that aims to improve human health by determining the relevance of animal science discoveries to people. This research can provide the foundation for precision medicine, or personalized human health care. Precision medicine will be a key component of the NextGen Precision Health Initiative—the University of Missouri System’s top priority—by helping to accelerate medical breakthroughs for both patients in Missouri and beyond.

The study, “Maternal oxycodone treatment causes pathophysiological changes in the mouse placenta,” was published in Placenta, the official journal of the International Federation of Placenta Associations.