Study shows why women with multiple pregnancies tend to age quickly

July 26, 2018

Multiple pregnancies could age women's cells more quickly, suggests a new study from Northwestern University

Led by Calen Ryan and Christopher Kuzawa of Northwestern and Dan Eisenberg to the University of Washington, the research could help explain why women with many children tend to show signs of accelerated aging.

The findings, published this week in Scientific Reports were achieved by examining two distinct markers of cellular aging: telomere length "Telomere length and epigenetic age are cellular markers that Independently predict mortality, and both seemed "older" in women who had more pregnancies in their reproductive system. "Stories," said Ryan, lead author of the study and a PhD student in biological anthropology at Northwestern. "Even after taking into account other factors that affect cellular 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 according to the researchers.Another conclusion that they did not expect was the fact that women who were currently pregnant had cells that looked younger – not older than what had been predicted

"Paradoxically, even though a woman's biological age was higher. if a woman was pregnant at the time of measurement, her epigenetic age and, to a lesser extent, her telomeres, appeared "younger" than expected for her chronological age, "said Kuzawa, lead author of the study and a professor of anthropology at Northwestern.

"It's an interesting situation in which pregnancy temporarily gives the impression of being" young ", but there seems to be a lasting and cumulative relationship between the number of pregnancies and the number of pregnancies. 39, accelerated biological age. "

Epidemiological records and studies that women who have many children tend to have slightly shorter lives and succumb to different diseases than those who do not.

"What we did not know was that we could detect these types of effects using measures of cellular aging," Ryan said. "We also did not know if we would detect such effects in relatively young women in this population, all aged 20 to 22 at the time."

"Our study was conducted in Cebu, Philippines, where energy can be limited, and the physical workload is often high," said Ryan. "In the high-resource environments typical of the world," he said. In Europe and the United States, the health risks associated with pregnancy may be lower. "

Although there are good reasons to have more children, in particular more than four or "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. 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 in women's lives, but we do not know if these changes will lead to results. health to long-term less favorable. "

To answer these questions, a follow-up study on the same women 13 years after the first measurements, taken in 2005, is already underway.

"We want to see if we can reproduce these results longitudinally and if cells still look older later in life," Ryan said. "We still have many issues to address which, we hope, will help us understand how factors such as socio-economic status and diet could contribute to women's reproductive costs."