If villi could talk !!
We are very delicate but simple structures. We adopt a fractal disposition out of necessity, but sometimes this convenience turns into a burden when surface area becomes much greater than mass-volume increasing our innate fragility.
We do not gather to form specialized regions or subsystems, so we have to do everything by ourselves and because of that and also due to our very simple construction and components we respond to very different agressions from our permanently moving environment with very limitted reactions. Which means that a diversity of agressions or changes with different origins get similar responses. Worse yet is the fact that our microenvironment is so deceptive that sometimes we cannot figure out what is good and what is bad for our main task and survival, and yet, most of the times we finish our job successfully.
Many of us get sick and die in the process. Other times we get tired, weakened, break away and quit the system .... there is so much noice, movement and even turbulence around us all the time. Often we need help, not hellp, but so far our final human product cannot do much about it in spite of all his technological feats, which is a shameful situation because without us he would not exist in this planet.
Events taking place in the intervillous space of the feto-maternal interface.
Platelets in light blue. Maternal red blood cells in red. Fetal red blood cells in brown.
Antibodies in violet. Sinciciotrophoblast in green. Cytotrophoblast in dark blue.
See below for further notes.
Above is the site of a villous undergoing fragmentation allowing fetomaternal cells and blood elements traffic. As soon as this occurs the sealing process begins with a platelets plug first (right upper corner) but not before an antigen-antibody reaction takes place. Also the disruption of the villous trophoblast external lining causes a momentary depolarization of the membrane from negative to positive, in part because of the temporary decrease in chorionic gonadotrophin production, storage and deposition on the membrane's surface. (left upper corner). These events are significantly increased in pre-eclampsia-eclampsia, and they seem to result from a multifactorial dysfunction of the feto-maternal interface.
For real microphotographs of chorionic villi and other placental pathology go to
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Dr. M. Lopez-Llera M.