Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2022 Jan 5;121:46–55. doi: 10.1016/j.humpath.2021.12.012

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 1 — Case n°1: No significant macroscopic placental lesions on the chorionic A1 and basal A2 plates. A3 Unusual diffuse macroscopic lesions, characterized by several intraplacental and subchorial hematoma, dissociating the placental tissue. B1 Diffuse intervillous hemorrhagic lesions associated with extensive trophoblast necrosis and chronic intervillitis. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining. B2 Trophoblast necrosis and chronic intervillitis. H&E. C1 Brown staining at the periphery of the chorionic villi represents trophoblast infection identified by immunohistochemistry (IHC) using SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein antibody. Few inflammatory cells in the intervillous space show also positive staining. C2 Negative control (patient COVID + with no placental lesion), IHC with anti–SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antibody show no positivity. C3 IHC with anti–SARS-CoV2-spike antibody show patchy granular cytoplasmic staining. Case n°2: Both D1 (H&E) and D2 (H&E) show massive hemorrhagic inundation of intervillous space and extensive villous trophoblast necrosis. Surrounding the villi, chronic histiocytic intervillositis and ﬁbrin deposits are observed as well as several polynuclear. D3 (H&E) Villous trophoblast shows signs of cellular injury including karyorrhexis, fragmentation of trophoblast nuclei, and clearing of the cytoplasm. Case n°3: E Microscopic aspects comparable to cases 1 and 2 (H&E). F IHC with anti–SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antibody is highly positive in necrosis trophoblast. Intervillous inflammatory infiltrate G1 with both T lymphocytes (IHC with CD3 antibody) and G2 monocytic cells (IHC with CD68 antibody).