[ad_1]
Multiple pregnancies could age women's cells faster, suggests a new study from Northwestern University.
Led by Calen Ryan and Christopher Kuzawa of Northwestern and Dan Eisenberg at the University of Washington, the research could help explain why women with lots of kids tend to show signs of accelerated aging.
The results, published this week in [
]. were reached by examining two distinct markers of cellular aging – telomere length and epigenetic age – in hundreds of young women with different reproductive histories in the Philippines.
"Telomere length and epigenetic age are cellular markers that independently predict mortality, and both appeared to be" older "in women who had more pregnancies in their reproductive history," Ryan said. , senior author of the study and Ph.D. student in biological anthropology at Northwestern. "Even after taking into account other factors that affect cell aging, the number of pregnancies is even higher."
Cell aging was accelerated between 0.5 and 2 years for each additional pregnancy, a surprisingly important effect according to the researchers.Another conclusion they did not expect was the fact that the women who were currently pregnant had cells that looked younger – not older – than expected
"Paradoxically, even though a woman's biological age was higher The woman was pregnant when the measurements were taken, her epigenetic age and, to a lesser extent, her telomeres, seemed "younger" than expected for her chronological age, "said Kuzawa, lead author of the study. study and professor of anthropology at Northwestern. 19659005] "It's an interesting situation in which pregnancy temporarily gives the impression of being 'young', but there seems to be a lasting cumulative relationship between the number of pregnancies and the number of pregnancies. accelerated biological age. "
Epidemiological studies according to which women with many children have a slightly shorter life and succumb to different diseases than those who are not.
"What we did not know was if we could detect these types of effects using measures of cellular aging," Ryan said. "We also did not know if we were going to detect such effects in relatively young women in this population, all aged 20 to 22 at this time. "
" Our study was conducted in Cebu, Philippines, where energy may be limited, and the physical workload is often high, "said Ryan. "In the high-resource environments typical of Europe and the United States, the health risks associated with pregnancy might be lower."
Although there are good reasons for To have more children, more than four or five "Our study highlights cellular changes during pregnancy, perhaps related to adaptive changes in the mother's immune system as a possible explanation," said Kuzawa, also a faculty. Fellow at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research. "We still do not know much, for example, we do not know if these relationships will persist in later life, but we do not know if these changes will lead to less favorable long-term health outcomes. "
To answer these questions, a follow-up study of the same women 13 years after the first measurements, taken in 2005, is already in progress.
" We want to see if we can reproduce these results longitudinally and if the cells always look older later in life, "said Ryan." We still have a lot of issues to address which, we hope, will help us understand how factors such as socio-economic status and the # Diet can contribute to the costs of reproduction in women. "
Learn more:
Decreased mean platelet counts during pregnancy
More information:
"Reproduction Predicts Telomer Acceleration and Epigenetic Age Among Young Adult Women" published earlier this week in Scientific Reports .
Source link
