Abstract
Current social trends of delayed reproduction to the fourth and fifth decade of life call for a better understanding of reproductive aging. Demographic studies correlated late reproduction with general health and longevity. Telomeres, the protective ends of eukaryotic chromosomes, were implicated in various aging-associated pathologies and longevity. To examine whether telomeres are also associated with reproductive aging, we measured by Southern analysis the terminal restriction fragments (TRF) in leukocytes of women delivering a healthy infant following a spontaneous pregnancy at 43–48 years of age. We compared them to age-matched previously fertile women who failed to conceive above age 41. The average TRF length in the extended fertility group (9350 bp) was significantly longer than in the normal fertility group (8850 bp; p-value = 0.03). Strikingly, excluding women with nine or more children increased the difference between the groups to over 1000 bp (9920 and 8880 bp; p-value = 0.0009). Nevertheless, we observed no apparent effects of pregnancy, delivery, or parity on telomere length. We propose that longer leukocyte telomere length reflects higher oocyte quality, which can compensate for other limiting physiological and behavioral factors and enable successful reproduction. Leukocyte telomere length should be further explored as a novel biomarker of oocyte quality for assessing reproductive potential and integrating family planning with demanding women’s careers.
Highlights
In the modern era, as part of the social trends of delayed reproduction, an increasing number of women prefer to postpone childbearing to the fourth and fifth decade of their lives
To examine the association of telomeres with extended fertility in women, we measured telomere length in sixty women 43–48 years old: Thirty women who naturally conceived and delivered a healthy baby in the extended fertility (EF) group and thirty women who failed to conceive above the age of 41 in the normal fertility (NF) group
Mean telomere terminal restriction fragments (TRF) length was measured in three non-redundant separate gels, each including randomly assigned non-redundant EF and Normal Fertility (NF) samples that were collected 48 h after delivery for the EF group and at recruitment for the NF group
Summary
As part of the social trends of delayed reproduction, an increasing number of women prefer to postpone childbearing to the fourth and fifth decade of their lives This narrows down the window of opportunities, since natural conceptions, and especially the ability to deliver a genetically healthy child, decline rapidly and become rare during the fifth decade of life [1]. Demographic studies among different ethnic groups and different epochs positively correlated late female reproduction with signs of general health and longevity [6,7,8,9,10] These studies suggest that extended fertility and delayed aging have a common genetic background
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