ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
Pregnancy is linked to faster epigenetic aging in young women.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal biological ageing and telomere attrition across parity, pregnancy, and the postpartum period.Biogerontology · 2026Review
- Age at First Reproduction Predicts Sex-Specific Parasite Infection Trajectories Through Adulthood.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Maternal biological aging from pregnancy through four years postpartum with disrupted recovery by subsequent pregnancy.iScience · 2026Article
- Multiparity exacerbates Aβ accumulation and promotes cellular senescence in a mouse model of amyloidosis.Immunity & ageing : I & A · 2026Article
- Pregnancy lab test dynamics resemble rejuvenation of some organs and aging of others.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Advances in multi-omics and aging clock research for female reproductive health and aging.MedScience · 2026Review
- Aging drives a program of DNA methylation decay in plant organs.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Epigenetic aging and lifespan reflect reproductive history in the Finnish Twin Cohort.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Association of pregnancy history and unhealthy lifestyle with biological age acceleration: a large cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Association of female reproductive traits with altered aging trajectories: Insights from genetic and observational analyses.Cell reports. Medicine · 2025Observational
- Short- and long-term costs of reproduction revealed by telomere dynamics in wild greater horseshoe bats.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A National Institute on Aging workshop on the long-term effects of pregnancy on aging.Nature aging · 2025Article
- Lifetime fitness and annual survival are heritable and highly genetically correlated in a wild primate population.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Mothers facing greater environmental adversity experience increased costs of reproduction.Science advances · 2025Article
- Sensitive periods for the link between childhood maltreatment and brain aging during adulthood.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- Climate-related disasters and biological aging based on DNA methylation: a twin and family study in Australian women.International journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Sex differences in DNA methylation in bats.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Cardiac remodelling, recognition memory deficits and accelerated ageing in a rat model of gestational diabetes.Diabetologia · 2025Article
- Biological Aging and Uterine Fibrosis in Cattle: Reproductive Trade-Offs from Enhanced Productivity.Cells · 2025Review
- Epigenetic ageing clocks: statistical methods and emerging computational challenges.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2025Review
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
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Abstract
A central prediction of evolutionary theory is that energy invested into reproduction comes at the expense of somatic maintenance and repair, accelerating biological aging. Supporting this prediction are findings that high fertility among women predicts shorter lifespan and poorer health later in life. However, biological aging is thought to begin before age-related health declines, limiting the applicability of morbidity and mortality for studying the aging process earlier in life. Here, we examine the relationship between reproductive history and biological aging in a sample of young (20 to 22yo) men and women from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey, located in the Philippines (n = 1,735). We quantify biological aging using six measures, collectively known as epigenetic clocks, reflecting various facets of cellular aging, health, and mortality risk. In a subset of women, we test whether longitudinal changes in gravidity between young and early-middle adulthood (25 to 31yo) are associated with changes in epigenetic aging during that time. Cross-sectionally, gravidity was associated with all six measures of accelerated epigenetic aging in women (n = 825). Furthermore, longitudinal increases in gravidity were linked to accelerated epigenetic aging in two epigenetic clocks (n = 331). In contrast, the number of pregnancies a man reported fathering was not associated with epigenetic aging among same-aged cohort men (n = 910). These effects were robust to socioecological, environmental, and immunological factors, consistent with the hypothesis that pregnancy accelerates biological aging and that these effects can be detected in young women in a high-fertility context.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.