The Sexually Dimorphic Nature of the Human Placenta: A Literature Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Neonatal growth is dependent on the ability of the mother’s placenta to deliver nutrients. As such, placental health is an important aspect of obstetric care. Existing literature has suggested an association between fetal sex and placental growth and development; however, no centralized study has been conducted. This paper aims to conduct a narrative review that summarizes findings from published literature on the effects of fetal sex on the growth and development of the placenta through three facets: placental function, structure, and outcome. Methods: Databases including Medline, Embase, and EMCare in Ovid, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched using keywords for the concepts of fetal sex and placenta. These were searched in combination with keywords relevant to placental function, placental structure, and pregnancy outcomes, using Boolean operators “OR/AND/NOT” as necessary. Studies written in English and published in peer reviewed journals were considered, with an emphasis on those published between 2017-2021. Results: Sexual dimorphism is evident in the fetal responses to stressful maternal environmental conditions, onset by conditions such as asthma and obesity. Sex-specific differences have also been observed in complications of pregnancy, including gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), preeclampsia, preterm delivery, stillbirth, and insufficient uteroplacental circulation. Discussion: Despite the placentas from male and female births being categorized together in previous literature, this review highlights the sexually dimorphic nature of the ephemeral organ. Knowledge of fetal sex as early as possible during the pregnancy will help clinicians take proactive measures to optimize the health of the mother and the fetus. Conclusion: This study provides a holistic review of the effects of placental development among the fetal sexes, a critical aspect to monitor for effective obstetric care. Hence, further research into the sexually dimorphic nature is warranted.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".