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A new study suggests that women who give birth later in their lives tend to live longer.
The study by the Boston University School of Medicine analyzed genetic information from 551 families and has been published in Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Society.
Scientists found that women who are able to have children after the age of 33 have a better chance of living longer than those who have their last child before the age of 30.
“Of course this does not mean women should wait to have children at older ages in order to improve their own chances of living longer,” explained corresponding author Thomas Perls, MD, MPH according to the press release. “The age at last childbirth can be a rate of aging indicator. The natural ability to have a child at an older age likely indicates that a woman’s reproductive system is aging slowly, and therefore so is the rest of her body.”
Although the researchers did not determine why this particular group of women lives longer, they reasoned that these women could have genetic variants that slow down their aging and prolong their lives by reducing the risk of age-related genes. The researchers stated that if women did carry these variants, it would explain why women live a lot longer than men.
“If a woman has those variants, she is able to reproduce and bear children for a longer period of time, increasing her chances of passing down those genes to the next generation,” said Perls, the director of the New England Centenarian Study (NECS), a principal investigator of the LLFS and a professor of medicine at BUSM. “This possibility may be a clue as to why 85 percent of women live to 100 or more years while only 15 percent of men do.”
Agencies/Canadajournal
