Women with many children age more slowly
At first glance, it is obvious that the more offspring, the more time and effort is needed to raise and educate them. It turned out that this pattern is provided at the genetic level.The authors managed to show for the first time that mothers with many children recover telomere length better.
Recall that telomeres, which have been talked about a lot lately, are areas at the ends of chromosomes that are counters of our biological age. The DNA of telomeres consists of a series of repeating fragments of nucleotides (repeats), and in all vertebrates these repeats have the same structure (TTAGGG).
Telomeres shorten with each cell division and thus serve as a counter for the number of cell divisions. The counter works because the DNA polymerase enzyme, which doubles DNA during cell division, cannot read information from its end and each subsequent copy of DNA becomes shorter than the previous one. After a certain number of cycles, cell division stops. The aging process begins.
In chromosomes, telomeres perform a protective function – they protect the main part of the DNA of the chromosome from damage. But there is also a protection for the telomeres themselves – this is the enzyme telomerase. He is able to complete the repeats of nucleotides at the ends of DNA and thereby restore telomeres. Telomerase consists of two main parts: protein (enzyme revertase) and RNA, which serves as a matrix for completion. It is assumed that the slowing down of the aging process is associated with the activity of telomerase.
The current study involved 75 women from two rural areas of Guatemala. They were chosen because their population is genetically homogeneous. The length of their telomeres was determined twice within 13 years.
As it turned out, mothers with many children had longer telomeres compared to those women who had one child.
Graph from an article in PLOS ONE – VM
Scientists suggest that this is most likely due to the influence of estrogen.
"The slowing down of telomere shortening in those women who have many children, as our study has shown, may be due to the fact that they have more estrogen. Estrogen in this case works as an antioxidant that protects telomeres from rapid shortening," says lead author of the study Pablo Nepomnaschy from Simon Fraser University (in a press release from Simon Fraser University, The number of children women have been associated with the pace of cellular aging in a rural population of Mayan women – VM).
But perhaps telomeres are affected by another mechanism, he adds. The fact is that in many closed communities it is customary to pay more attention to mothers with many children – they are taken care of and surrounded with love.
"These women receive a lot of support from their relatives and acquaintances. And this means that the energy of their cellular metabolism can be spent very wisely, including, perhaps, to maintain the length of telomeres, i.e. to slow down the aging process," says Dr. Nepomnyashchy.
The authors report on the results of their research in the latest issue of the journal PLOS ONE (Barha et al., Number of Children and Telomere Length in Women: A Prospective, Longitudinal Evaluation).
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11.01.2015