Multiscale computational modeling to quantify how spiral artery remodeling alters wall shear stress on placental villi

Description

Armita Najmi and Noelia Grande Gutiérrez model how a mother's remodeled arteries set the shear forces on her placenta's exchange surface. Their 2026 paper addresses a gap in pregnancy science. In healthy pregnancy the spiral arteries widen, calming the flow that bathes the placental villi. In growth restriction and preeclampsia that remodeling falls short, and the villi develop badly, but the mechanical link was unmeasured.

Their multiscale simulation couples a whole-placenta flow model to microscopic villus models. Flow speed, they find, is the master variable for the shear on villi, far outweighing villus shape or orientation. Healthy values mostly sit in a low band. Matching stress maps against regions where end villi fail to form brackets a stress range that seems to block villus growth. Failed remodeling pushed stress into exactly that range. The authors offer the threshold as a design target for understanding placental disease.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13600612