2024-04-03 04:00:10
Aleksandra Milenovic and her one-day-old baby, Milica, at the Narodni Front obstetrics and gynecological clinic, in Belgrade, July 31, 2018. OLIVER BUNIC / AFP
Unlike our chronological age which advances inexorably, our biological or physiological age, a reflection of our functional capacities, fluctuates. It increases depending on different factors: stress, illnesses, surgical operations but also pregnancy. In 2023, in Cell Metabolismresearch carried out by Jesse Poganik, geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (the university hospital of Harvard Medical School), in Boston, had thus demonstrated that motherhood in particular led to more rapid molecular aging in mice and women .
But the arrow of biological time can also be reversed. Based on this research, work also published in Cell MetabolismFriday March 22, in the form of correspondence, suggest that, if pregnancy accelerates biological age, it declines after childbirth, particularly in those who breastfeed or have a body mass index lower than normal.
In detail, the researchers analyzed blood samples taken from 119 women at four times during their pregnancy: at the beginning, in the middle, at the end of pregnancy as well as around three months after giving birth in 68 of them. they. By analyzing different molecular clocks, the researchers found changes in DNA methylation – regulating gene expression – which can be interpreted as a marker of aging.
A reduction in biological age from 3 years to 8 years
These researchers observed these changes in leukocytes (white blood cells) and thus demonstrated an increase varying from 0.7 years to 2.52 years in these pregnant women. “But the marked reversal in biological age between the end of pregnancy and three months after delivery was completely unexpected. This is what struck us the mostsays Kieran O’Donnell, perinatal health expert at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study. We saw a decrease in biological age from three years to eight years. »
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The originality of this study also lies in the fact that the researchers identified the body mass index before pregnancy and breastfeeding as two factors likely to influence the biological aging of the mother during pregnancy and after pregnancy. childbirth. In fact, the biological age in pregnant women with a body mass index equal to 30 (equivalent to moderate obesity) was 0.7 years to 1.4 years higher than that of those whose BMI was equal to 23.
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