An organ in a woman’s body ages twice as fast as all other tissues, wreaking havoc on both fertility and long-term health.
“The ovaries are very strange, very strange in relation to the rest of the human body. We can think of them as an accelerated model for human aging,” said Jennifer Garrison, an assistant professor at California’s Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the first biomedical research institution dedicated solely to the science of aging.
+ Male infertility is taboo and needs to be investigated, says doctor
“When a woman is in her late 20s or early 30s, the rest of her tissue is functioning at peak performance, but her ovaries are already showing obvious signs of aging,” Garrison told an audience at Life Itself, a charity event. health and wellness presented this year in partnership with CNN.
“However, most women learn about their ovaries and ovarian function when they first use them and discover they are geriatric,” he added.
The consequences of aging ovaries go beyond fertility, especially during menopause, when a person stops having a menstrual cycle.
“When the ovaries stop functioning due to menopause, they stop producing a cocktail of hormones important for overall health,” Garrison told CNN. “Even in healthy women, it dramatically increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, cognitive decline, insomnia, osteoporosis, weight gain, arthritis – these are medically established facts.”
Have more. The age of menopause is also linked to longevity. The average age of natural menopause in the United States is 51 years old, according to the North American Menopause Society.
“Studies show that women who have late menopause tend to live longer and have an improved ability to repair their DNA,” Garrison said. “But women with natural menopause before age 40 are twice as likely to die (early) compared to women who go through natural menopause between age 50 and 54.”
What if science could learn to slow the rate of aging in the ovaries?7
“It would be a game changer, right? Women would have parity and choices in their reproductive choices and would be empowered with control over their lives,” said Garrison. “And at the same time, we could delay the onset of these age-related diseases and hopefully prolong life.”
An egg in your grandmother’s womb
Wrap your brain around this: you are a product of an oocyte (an immature egg) that was growing in your grandmother’s womb. See how:
When a female fetus reaches 20 weeks’ gestation, there are between 6 million and 7 million oocytes in these small, developing ovaries. You came from one of those – which means when your grandmother was about five months pregnant, you were a possibility inside her womb.
“That’s why there are multi-generational impacts to any environmental exposure a woman may have when she’s pregnant. It not only affects the woman and fetus, it also spans generations,” said reproduction researcher Francesca Duncan, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
When her mother was born, however, her infant ovaries only carried 1 million to 2 million eggs, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Massive loss of oocytes in the uterus occurs in much of the animal kingdom. Some researchers think it could be a normal step in fetal growth or development.
By the time people reach puberty, they only have about 300,000 to 400,000 immature eggs left. “The ovary is probably the only organ that loses its function before its first use,” Duncan said.
The decline increases with age. For 95% of people, only 12% of their eggs will be available by age 30 and just 3% by age 40, according to a January 2010 analysis.
Why does accelerated aging occur?
Why do humans develop senile ovaries at age 30? Science doesn’t know, Garrison said, “and learning about how little we know about why this happens actually infuriated me.”
One reason: a historic lack of funding for reproductive research, she said. Then there’s the fact that research studies often ignore women: “Women were found to be confounders (confusion) in the data – their cycles are noisy and mess up the data.”
Today that has changed. In 2017, the National Institutes of Health issued an amendment to its policies for enrolling women and minorities in clinical trials – new language requires study results to be reported by sex/gender and race/ethnicity. In 2020, the NIH issued its first sex and gender research grant, calling it a “historic achievement.”
While the extent of fertility is a result of research in the field, scientists are not trying to help people get pregnant naturally in their 50s, 60s and 70s, said Dr. Kara Goldman, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School. of Medicine.
“That would be a completely irresponsible and ultimately short-sighted goal. We’re thinking about the big picture: the best way to prevent the health impact of menopause is to prolong the natural functioning of the ovaries,” Goldman said.
#Increasing #womans #fertility #prolong #life