Pregnancy May Accelerate Biological Ageing In Young Women, Says Study

The study's author said, "Strong medical, social and nutritional support for new moms is always the best policy over the long run," he said.

Women make a lot of sacrifices for their children. Now, a new study has revealed that pregnancy can speed up ageing in young mothers. Researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York examined the reproductive histories and DNA samples of 1,735 participants in a long-term, ongoing health study conducted in the Philippines to examine the impact of childbearing on the ageing process, as per The Guardian.

Six distinct "epigenetic clocks," or genetic instruments that gauge biological age based on patterns of a process known as DNA methylation, were used to calculate the ages. Every pregnancy a woman reported was associated with an extra two to three months of biological ageing, as per the study which involved 825 young women. Women who reported more pregnancies over a six-year follow-up period also demonstrated a greater increase in biological ageing during that time. Thus, they found women who had been pregnant in the past looked "biologically older" than those who had never carried a child.

Even after the investigators took into consideration the participants' environment, smoking habits, socioeconomic level, and genetic diversity, the associations between pregnancy and biological ageing remained the same.