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Oral Concurrent Session 3 - Basic Science

Oral Concurrent Sessions

(33) Bioaccumulation of Microplastics in Placentae Associated with Environmental Chemical Exposures and Obstetrical Outcomes

Tuesday, February 13, 2024
1:30 PM – 1:45 PM  
Location: Potomac Ballroom D, Ballroom Level
Objective: Inhalation and ingestion of millions of microplastics (particles < 20 µm) occur annually in people. Microplastic exposures have been linked to increased levels of inflammatory markers in experimental animal models. Given the putative role of disrupted inflammatory pathways in preterm birth risk, we hypothesized that microplastics quantitatively differ in human placentae.

Study Design: We visualized and quantified cumulative microplastics (Fig. 1A) by Fourier-transformed infrared microscopy (FTIR; n=31), quantified microplastics species by pyrolysis followed by quantitative time of flight gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (pyro-qTOF/GC-MS; n=10), and quantified polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs; n=70) BaP, BbF, and DBA by GC/MS. We then applied machine learning algorithms correlating environmental toxicants (n=24 with PAH and microplastics data) with social deprivation scores and obstetrics outcomes.


Results: Microplastics were detected in 100% of placentae (1.45-26.3 mg/g, mean 6.91 mg/g ±1.1 SEM). With pyro-qTOF/GC-MS, we detected 12 polymers with high specificity, with polyethylene being the most prominent (Fig. 1B). There was more variation between placentae in terms of the total plastics (p=0.002), compared contributions from individual plastic types (p< 0.0001). Machine learning identified the top predictive features of microplastics were gestational age and APGAR scores. Pearson’s correlation analysis (Fig. 1C) revealed significantly higher polyethylene in the placentae of male offspring compared to females (Fig. 1D; p=0.032). Bulk and spatial transcriptomics (n=10) identified significant (q< 0.05) gene expression alterations associated with quartile distributions of toxicants.


Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first study to quantitate and speciate the bioaccumulation of microplastics in placentae. Further, we utilized these data to train a predictive model of environmental exposures at the maternal-fetal interface, which will only become more translational with additional integration.