{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0268591","title":"Placental vascular remodeling in pregnant women with COVID-19","abstract":"Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has been causing the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that has so far resulted in over 450 million infections and six million deaths. This respiratory virus uses angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 as a receptor to enter host cells and affects various tissues in addition to the lungs. The present study reports that the placental arteries of women who gave birth to live full-term newborns while developing COVID-19 during pregnancy exhibit severe vascular wall thickening and the occlusion of the vascular lumen. A morphometric analysis of the placental arteries stained with hematoxylin and eosin suggests a 2-fold increase in wall thickness and a 5-fold decrease in the lumen area. Placental vascular remodeling was found to occur in all of SARS-CoV-2-positive mothers as defined by RT-PCR. Immunohistochemistry with α-smooth muscle actin and the Kv11.1 channel as well as Masson's trichrome staining showed that such placental vascular remodeling in COVID-19 is associated with smooth muscle proliferation and fibrosis. Placental vascular remodeling may represent a response mechanism to the clinical problems associated with childbirth in COVID-19 patients.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2022,"id":251989,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":24,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9615,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":477531,"name":"Tinatin I. Brelidze","orcid":"0000-0003-3046-8184","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":821216,"name":"Iurii Kuchyn","orcid":"0000-0002-9667-1911","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":821217,"name":"Tetiana Savchuk","orcid":"0000-0002-7218-0253","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279903,"name":"Sofia I. Nikolaienko","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":821851,"name":"Volodymyr M. Zhezhera","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":821218,"name":"Ihor I. Chermak","orcid":"0000-0003-3029-5578","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277677,"name":"Yuichiro Suzuki","orcid":"0000-0001-6689-0497","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277681,"name":"Sergiy G. Gychka","orcid":"0000-0002-6821-0085","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":17,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:24:46.226372Z","pmid":"35905056","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}