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Environmental pollutants cause placental dysfunctions to induce miscarriage
Summary
This Chinese research group review identified environmental pollutants including nanoplastics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and disinfection byproducts as causes of placental dysfunction that may lead to unexplained miscarriage. Their experimental work showed that nanoplastics can disrupt placental function and implantation, contributing to a growing body of evidence linking environmental contamination to pregnancy loss.
Approximately 15%-25% pregnant women experience spontaneous miscarriage, and 1%-5% suffer from recurrent miscarriage (RM). 1 Miscarriage not only affects fertility but also seriously impacts families and society.Many factors might induce miscarriage, including chromosomal abnormalities, uterine deformation, hormonal abnormalities, infections, psychological trauma and stressful life events, and immune disorders.However, there are still 50% causes unidentified.Increasing epidemiologic evidences have indicated that exposure to environmental pollutants (such as heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, et al.) is highly associated with unexplained miscarriage.However, the association, causation, and underlying mechanisms between these environmental toxicants and unexplained miscarriage are still largely unexplored.Therefore, it is great of significance for exploring whether and how these environmental toxicants might induce unexplained miscarriage.Meanwhile, placenta play essential roles in healthy pregnancy and its dysfunctions might always induce miscarriage.In recent years, this group have identified that many environmental toxicants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nanoplastics, hypoxia, metals, and disinfection byproducts, could cause placental dysfunctions to induce miscarriage (Figure 1).