Young adult women’s epigenetic ageing is accelerated by shorter telomeres in young adults who reproduce.
According to evolutionary theory, reproduction costs are diverted from somatic maintenance and accelerate biological aging. Studies in humans and non-humans have shown that the mechanisms linking \”costs of reproductive\” (CoR), to aging, are not well understood. The human pregnancy is marked by significant changes in metabolism, oxidative stresses, and immune cell proliferation. These adaptations, we hypothesized, could accelerate blood-derived cell aging. We tested this hypothesis by examining gravidity and its relation to DNA-methylation (DNAmAge) age and telomere (n = 821) length in a group of Filipino women aged 20-22 years. Both age-corrected DNAmAge and accelerated TL predict mortality and morbidity associated with aging and are markers of mitotic or non-mitotic cell aging. According to theoretical predictions, TL decreased with gravidity (p = 0.031), and DNAmAge grew (p = 0.007). This relationship was independent of resource availability. Both biomarkers (p = 0.3) were not associated with subsequent fertilty, which is consistent with the causal effect of gravidity. Our findings show that women’s reproduction has a cost in the form of an accelerated ageing through two different cellular pathways.
Source:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29486-4
