 |
| Credit: Courtesy of the researchers/Princeton University |
"Women have been told for years that if they don't have children before their mid-30s, they may not be able to. But a new study from Princeton University's Coleen Murphy has identified a drug that extends egg viability in worms, even when taken midway through the fertile window, which could theoretically extend women's fertility by three to six years. Her work appears in the current issue of the journal Current Biology.
"One of the most important characteristics of aging is the loss of reproductive ability in mid-adulthood," said Murphy, a professor of molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. "As early as the mid-30s, women start to experience declines in fertility, increased rates of miscarriage and maternal age-related birth defects. All of these problems are thought to be caused by declining egg quality, rather than a lack of eggs."
When she reviewed the literature on aging and on reproductive health about a decade ago, she discovered that this particular question -- how to maintain egg quality with age -- had been overlooked by researchers from both fields. "It's really why we started this," she said. "They were missing something that's really important to a lot of people. We just wondered whether we could do anything to contribute to that."
Murphy, who is also the director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for Aging Research at Princeton, specializes in using a microscopic worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, to study longevity. These worms have many of the same genes as humans, including those that drive the aging processes of their three-week-long lives. Several years ago, researchers in her lab discovered that C. elegans not only exhibits a similar mid-life decline in reproduction, but also that their unfertilized eggs (oocytes) showed similar declines in quality with age to human eggs..."
Learn more:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180222125659.htm
"One of the most important characteristics of aging is the loss of reproductive ability in mid-adulthood," said Murphy, a professor of molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. "As early as the mid-30s, women start to experience declines in fertility, increased rates of miscarriage and maternal age-related birth defects. All of these problems are thought to be caused by declining egg quality, rather than a lack of eggs."
When she reviewed the literature on aging and on reproductive health about a decade ago, she discovered that this particular question -- how to maintain egg quality with age -- had been overlooked by researchers from both fields. "It's really why we started this," she said. "They were missing something that's really important to a lot of people. We just wondered whether we could do anything to contribute to that."
Murphy, who is also the director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for Aging Research at Princeton, specializes in using a microscopic worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, to study longevity. These worms have many of the same genes as humans, including those that drive the aging processes of their three-week-long lives. Several years ago, researchers in her lab discovered that C. elegans not only exhibits a similar mid-life decline in reproduction, but also that their unfertilized eggs (oocytes) showed similar declines in quality with age to human eggs..."
Learn more:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180222125659.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment