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Dr. Kliman joins guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about his research, and the importance of studying the placenta as a way to better understand what leads to miscarriage and stillbirth.

In a new study, Yale research scientist Harvey Kliman found that a Yale-developed method to estimate placental volume is just as accurate — and less complex — than the current method.

When Ann O'Neill suffered a stillbirth in 2018, she was bewildered. She was already a mother to three healthy children and therefore had received no information on stillbirth prevention from her doctors. But when she brought the placental pathology results from the son she lost to Harvey Kliman, a physician-scientist specializing in pregnancy complications at the Yale School of Medicine, he found one critical abnormality that had been overlooked: a very small placenta.

If any institution can bend the curve on preventable stillbirth, it is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Yet, despite clear evidence and successful state initiatives, the ACOG has been frustratingly slow to revise its clinical guidelines.

In 2013, Samantha Durante Banerjee’s daughter, Alana, was stillborn. The tragedy was obvious, but the comforting words about trying again and being young always fell short.

In a new study, Yale researchers discovered that SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t linger in the placenta of patients who become infected with the virus during pregnancy.

The virus that causes COVID-19 does not appear to linger in placental tissue after a pregnant patient recovers from acute infection, according to a case-control study published this week in JAMA Network Open. The findings suggest that placental infection is unlikely in the weeks and months after illness, even in cases with adverse outcomes. “Our motivation for doing the study was to see if there was 'long COVID' in the placenta,” Harvey J. Kliman, MD, PhD, director of the Reproductive and Placental Research Unit at Yale School of Medicine and senior study author, told CIDRAP news in an email. “This is one of the scariest aspects of COVID: long COVID leading to chronic brain issues.” “We just didn’t know if this could also happen in the placenta, which is a magnet for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (because the placenta is covered with ACE2 [angiotensin-converting enzyme 2], the receptor for the spike protein of the virus),” he added. “So we thought it was necessary to look at this issue.”

Measuring the placenta is not a common prenatal protocol but it could save a baby's life, according to a Yale researcher.

Since 1998, Women’s Health Research at Yale’s signature Pilot Project Program has provided critical seed funding for Yale faculty examining sex differences across health in conditions that affect women differently, disproportionately, and uniquely. Our program serves as an incubator for catalyzing new approaches to understanding the health of women, and/or the influence of sex differences on health, consistent with the NIH definition. The 2025-26 application process is now open.