Pregnancy Adds to Women’s Biological Age

A study by the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences quantified the effect of pregnancy on biological aging. The study included more than 1,700 men and women from the Philippines aged 20 to 22 years old. The researchers concluded that the energy expended in reproduction comes at an expense. Across six epigenetic clock measurements, pregnancy was found to accelerate the women’s biological aging compared to those that had no pregnancies, and multiple pregnancies accelerated the women’s biological age on two of the epigenetic clock measures. Pregnancy did not result in aging of the men in the study.