The age of menopause is determined by genes that protect the DNA of eggs
Scientists have found genes that control the duration of women's sexual life
Doctors have discovered several dozen DNA sites, on the work of which the time of menopause depends, and found out that taking care of their condition can help women maximize their sexual life (here and elsewhere, instead of an explicit Freudian reservation, "sexual life" should be read "reproductive period" – VM), according to an article published in the journal Nature Genetics (Day et al., Large-scale genomic analyzes link reproductive aging to hypothalamic signaling, breast cancer susceptibility and BRCA1-mediated DNA repair)."Today, many women prefer to have children in the mature years of life, but they often have problems with conception due to the fact that the fertility of their eggs begins to fall noticeably already 10 years before the onset of menopause.
Our study shows why this happens, and we hope that it will help women in the future to avoid the early onset of menopause," said Anna Murray from the British University of Exeter (in a press release from the University of Cambridge Maintaining healthy DNA delays menopause – VM).
Murray and her colleagues have uncovered the genetic roots of the time of menopause by studying and comparing the genomes of almost 70 thousand women of European descent living in various parts of the world.
Comparing the time of the onset of menopause in them with how their genes related to the development of eggs and the maintenance of their "blanks" in a healthy state worked, the authors of the article found that the time of the onset of menopause is determined by one simple thing that scientists suspected for a long time, but could not prove.
According to Murray, the duration of a woman's sexual life depends for the most part only on how well her body protects itself and eggs from DNA damage. The effectiveness of this protection, as scientists have found out, depends not only on the age of the woman and the presence of bad habits, but also on the structure of 40 special sections of the genome that are responsible for maintaining the integrity of DNA in future eggs.
"We already knew that the time of menopause was partially determined by genes. Our research has shown that hundreds of genes are involved in this process, each of which can delay or accelerate menopause for several weeks or even a year. It's amazing how DNA repair genes can affect menopause so much. We think this is due to how quickly a woman loses eggs as her life progresses," added another author of the article, John Perry from the University of Cambridge (UK).
Managing the work of these genes and their additional protection, as Murray, Perry and their colleagues hope, will allow women to prolong their sex life and keep the opportunity to conceive a child for a long time. The opposite is also possible – the accelerated onset of menopause, as scientists explain, reduces the risk of breast cancer due to the fact that a woman's body produces noticeably less estrogen after menstruation stops.
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30.09.2015