Figure 3

The effect of gestation on CB2 immunoreactivity. CB2 immunostaining is present throughout the first trimester in both the trophoblast (upper panels) and decidua (lower panels). In the trophoblast, the majority of the staining was confined to the cytotrophoblast and syncytiotrophoblast layers and infiltrating maternal plasma cells. Similar to the CB1 immunostaining, intense CB2 immunoreactivity was observed in the decaying endometrial glands and decidualised stromal fibroblasts. The intensity of decidual cell staining increased and reach a peak around week 10. By contrast blood vessels had much lower staining intensities. Images were taken at 100× magnification and are representative of samples taken for each of the gestational dates indicated. Bar = 50 μm.