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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.

Asking better questions, listening more closely, and monitoring more carefully can mean the difference between life and death.

“Beauty of Science 2025” displays the striking imagery from YSM researchers across disciplines.

Each year in Minnesota, 400 babies are stillborn. Many mothers and families could be spared this heartbreak if medicine incorporated a 30-second procedure as standard practice.

There are simple steps that can help prevent a stillbirth, but Angela Moxley didn't learn that until she went through a stillbirth herself.

Serotonin is widely known as one of the human body’s “happiness hormones.” But Dr. Harvey Kliman, director of the Reproductive and Placental Research Unit at Yale, said serotonin is also a growth hormone — and it works in ways that can result in bigger or smaller babies in utero.

In a new study, Yale researchers show that the placenta regulates serotonin delivery to the fetus, contrary to past beliefs that it manufactures the hormone.