The backstory of the Unsung Hero of Early Pregnancy: the Corpus Luteum

This week’s episode is the ‘Making Sense of Pregnancy’ version of the broadway play (and now movie) Wicked: it provides the back story of a critical character in pregnancy that you likely didn’t know enough about. It also serves as a useful introduction to next week’s show that features the work of a scientist who is trying to untangle one possible path to preeclampsia that seems to arise in women who undergo a certain form of IVF.  And that story hinges, critically on this temporary organ you are making every month called the corpus luteum. Today I’ll share the current state of research on how the corpus luteum is formed and what it does or, alternatively, all the things I didn’t know about how these temporary organ, critical for the survival of our species, is formed and managed inside a woman’s body.