Study pregnancies accelerate cell aging

Pregnancy affects the cell aging of women?

Researchers found that giving birth to children can shorten the life expectancy of women. But this negative effect is probably not due to the stress of motherhood, but pregnancy could cause women's cells to age faster.

The researchers at Northwestern University found in their recent research that pregnancy appears to result in faster aging of cells in women. The physicians published the results of their study in the English language journal "Nature".

Telomeres from over 3,000 women were studied

In more than 3,000 Filipino women between the ages of 20 and 22, the current study analyzed so-called telomeres, the strands of human DNA that degrade over time and contribute to the aging of cells.

How do pregnancies affect your health??

According to the researchers, telomere length and health were found to decrease as DNA age increased with the number of women's pregnancies. Basically, women who have more children are more likely to have physical characteristics of someone older than their true age, the experts say.

Pregnancy accelerated cell aging by up to two years

Interestingly, the study also showed that the cell age of women who were pregnant during the study was temporarily lower than it should have been, suggesting that the biological burden of pregnancy appears to be more of a long-term change. The results show that reproduction in women leads to accelerated aging through two independent cellular pathways, the physicians explain. By measuring two key biomarkers, scientists were able to demonstrate that cell aging was accelerated between 0.5 and 2 years for each pregnancy.

These two markers can predict mortality

Telomere length and so-called epigenetic age are cellular markers that independently predict mortality, both appearing to be older in women who have more pregnancies in their reproductive history, study author Caled Ryan from Northwestern University explains. Even after considering other factors that influence cell aging, the number of pregnancies was still at the top. (As)