Author: PAULETTE_KAMENECKA

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SN: Ep 6 Dr. Mana Parast

The placenta is the diary of intrauterine life, so says Dr. Parast and her collegues. They are using this diary, after birth, to better understand both the trajectory of problems in birth (like IUGR and preeclampsia) as well as markers of impending morbidity for mothers (like autoimmune conditions that have not yet crossed the threshold of noticeable symptoms). Dr. Parast believes that placental pathology should be the standard of care in any birth that involved some sort of pregnancy complication, to better understand the cause of stillbirth (and potentially prevent future problems) and to guide maternal care in future pregnancies.

Check out some of the work the Parast Lab is doing here: https://pathology.ucsd.edu/research/labs/parast/index.html

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Dr. Carl Weiner, MD, OB, MFM, MBA

Dr. Weiner spent many years as a practicing OB and is currently the founder and chief medical officer of NALA diagnostics, a diagnostics company that creates tools to predict the likelihood of preterm birth and preeclampsia in the first/second trimester

Maternal Plasma RNA in First Trimester Nullipara for the Prediction of Spontaneous Preterm Birth ≤ 32 Weeks: Validation Study, 2023

Evaluation of a Maternal Plasma RNA Panel Predicting Spontaneous Preterm Birth and Its Expansion to the Prediction of Preeclampsia, 2022

Placental Alpha Microglobulin-1 Compared With Fetal Fibronectin to Predict Preterm Delivery in Symptomatic Women, 2017

Find more of Dr. Weiner’s published academic work here

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SN: Ep 5 Conversation with Carl Weiner

Many first time mothers experience the schedule of OB visits as informative: there are few visits in the beginning of the pregnancy and many near the end and one might take that to mean that there is more going on at the end than the beginning of gestation. 

In fact, there is a tremendous amount of activity going on in the opening weeks of pregnancy, but until now, we understood very little of it, and had very limited ability to change our trajectory with any move other than delivery.

Today’s guest, Dr. Carl Weiner, has mined some of the early data of the first trimester to allow him and his team to predict whether a premature birth is likely on the horizon when the pregnant person is 12 weeks pregnant. Today we’ll talk about his exciting work.

To find Dr. Carl Weiner’s work, see: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Carl+Weiner&sort=date

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Dr. Roger Young

Ep 4 How New Research on Uterine Contractions Could Revolutionize How Labor is Monitored

Selected publications:

Myocytes, Myometrium & Uterine Contractions, 2007

Mechanotransduction Mechanisms for Coordinating Contractions in Human Labor, 2016

Monitoring uterine contractions during labor: current challenges and future directions, 2023

Pubmed page with other references: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=roger+young&sort=date

LinkedIn bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-young-3ba27587/

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SN: Ep 4 Conversation with Roger Young

Here we are in the 21st century and we’re just figuring out how uterine contractions work.

Humans have giving birth for millions of years and we are only now unpacking part of the uterine contribution to this magic trick.

For years scientists used a rodent model to interrogate how uterine contractions work, which turned out to be the wrong model; scientists used the heart as a model organ to try to elucidate how electricity moves in the uterus and makes it contract, but that too, was the wrong model.

The uterus is sui generis, it’s own unique organ that, according to Dr. Roger Young, is in the last decade, becoming better understood; His company is working on making a fetal monitor to better assess when labor is in fact happening, by measuring the pressure changes in the uterus, a statistic that’s critical to understanding labor progression.  Keep listening to better understand how your uterus actually works.

To see some of Dr. Young’s academic work: see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=roger+young+uterus

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SN: Ep 3 Conversation with Dr. Sharon Dekel, PhD

Although postpartum depression is the most common side effect of pregnancy–roughly 1 in 6 women will experience a less often studied condition that may be equally common– post delivery post traumatic stress disorder. 

Dr. Sharon Dekel, PhD is a leading researcher in the developing field of childbirth related PTSD.  Her lab is focused on understanding, diagnosing and treating this regrettably common mental health challeng, and disentangling CB-PTSD from PPD. Diagnosis can be difficult to uncover because many women imagine themselves to be responsible for the natural challenges of labor and delivery; when the delivery doesn’t accord with their wishes, or takes a significant turn–which happens in roughly 20 to 30 percent of deliveries–women tend to blame themselves, and then fail to attend to the trauma and stress that follows them home from that experience. Dr. Dekel’s goal is to more quickly and accurately identify PTSD associated with childbirth, distinguish it from other postpartum mental health challenges, and get help for women who experience it. In our conversation today she talks about why this work is so important: not only does it address a significant source of stress on mothers, but PTSD can have dramatic impacts on the mother child bond, on the child’s development, and on the mother’s willingness to have more children.

Dr. Dekel also talks about her work training large language models to potentially identify PTSD after childbirth based on narrative based stories provided by women who’ve recently given birth.

To find Dr. Dekel’s work: https://www.massgeneral.org/doctors/22372/sharon-dekel-tsvetkov

You can also find Dr. Dekel’s Lab here:

https://massgeneral.link/DekelLab