“The ovaries are very strange, very strange in relation to the rest of the human body. We can think of them as an accelerated model for human aging,” said Jennifer Garrison, assistant professor at California’s Buck Institute for Research on Aging, in people. first biomedical research institution dedicated exclusively to the science of aging. “When a woman is in her late 20s or early 30s, the rest of her tissue is working at peak efficiency, but her ovaries are already showing obvious signs of aging,” Garrison told an audience at Life Itself, a health event and well-being presented. this year in partnership with CNN. “However, most women learn about their ovaries and ovarian function when they go to use them for the first time and find out they are geriatric,” she added. The consequences of ovarian aging extend beyond fertility, especially during menopause, the period of time when a person stops having a menstrual cycle. “When the ovaries stop working because of menopause, they stop making a cocktail of hormones that are important for overall health,” Garrison told CNN. “Even in healthy women, it dramatically increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, cognitive impairment, insomnia, osteoporosis, weight gain, arthritis — these are medically documented facts.” There are more. Age of menopause is also linked to longevity. The average age of natural menopause in the United States is 51, according to the North American Menopause Society. “Studies show that women who have a later menopause tend to live longer and have an enhanced ability to repair their DNA,” Garrison said. “But women with natural menopause before the age of 40 are twice as likely to die (prematurely) compared to women who go through natural menopause between the ages of 50 and 54.” What if science could learn to slow the rate of aging in the ovaries? “It would be a game changer, right? Women would have parity and choice in their reproductive choices and be able to control their lives,” Garrison said. “And at the same time, we could delay the onset of these age-related diseases and hopefully extend life.”
AN EGG IN YOUR GRANDMA’S UTERUS
Wrap your brain around this: You are the product of an oocyte (an immature egg) that grew in your grandmother’s womb. Here’s how: By the time a female fetus reaches 20 weeks gestation, there are between 6 and 7 million oocytes in these tiny, developing ovaries. You came from one of them — meaning that when your grandmother was about five months pregnant, you were a prospect of possibility inside her womb. “That’s why there are multigenerational effects to any environmental exposure a woman might have when she’s pregnant. Not only does it affect the woman and the fetus, but it extends across generations,” said reproductive researcher Francesca Duncan, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. By the time your mother was born, however, her baby’s ovaries were carrying only 1 to 2 million eggs, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Mass loss of eggs in the uterus occurs throughout much of the animal kingdom. Some researchers believe that it could be a normal step in the growth or development of the fetus. By the time humans reach puberty, there are only about 300,000 to 400,000 immature eggs left. “The ovary is probably the only organ that loses its function before the first use,” Duncan said. The decline escalates with age. For 95% of people, only 12% of their eggs will be available by age 30 and only 3% by 40, according to a January 2010 analysis.
WHY DOES ATTEMPTED AGING OCCUR?
Why do people develop senile ovaries by age 30? Science doesn’t know, Garrison said, “and learning how little we know about why that happens really pissed me off.” One reason: A historic lack of funding for reproductive research, he said. Then there’s the fact that research studies have generally ignored women: “Women were seen as a confound (confound) in the data — their cycles are noisy and mess up the data.” Today that has changed. In 2017, the National Institutes of Health issued an amendment to its policies regarding enrollment of women and minorities in clinical trials — the new language mandates results be reported by sex/gender and race/ethnicity. In 2020, the NIH issued its first gender and gender research grant, calling it a “landmark achievement.” While expanding fertility will be one outcome of research in the field, scientists aren’t trying to help people get pregnant naturally in their 50s, 60s and 70s, said Dr. Kara Goldman, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School. of Medicine. “That would be a completely irresponsible goal and ultimately a short-sighted one. We’re thinking about the bigger picture: The best way to prevent the health impact of menopause is to prolong natural ovarian function,” Goldman said.
BASIC QUESTIONS NEED ANSWERS
With the help of investors, Garrison launched the Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equity. The center funds research to accelerate the pace of discovery of the underlying causes of accelerated ovarian aging. Since science knows so little about the female reproductive cycle, research is forced to start with the basics, Garrison said. “What is the root cause of this decline in egg quality and quantity with age? We don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “The age of natural menopause is really variable at the individual level and we don’t know why.” In fact, science doesn’t even understand why people go through menopause at all. Only four other mammals — killer whales (orcas), minke whales, beluga whales, and narwhals — complete their menstrual cycle and have a lifespan after reproduction. “Why does a woman’s reproductive span correlate with her overall lifespan? Even siblings of women who go through menopause later tend to live longer,” Garrison added. “There’s a genetic component there that’s clearly very important and we don’t understand it at all.” If basic questions about the ovaries could be answered, “we would have cracked this thing,” Garrison said. “It’s not a moon shot – a moon shot would be to get rid of menopause altogether,” she said. “But understanding what’s causing it and thinking about interventions that will extend it a little bit by a year, two years, five years, 10 years — that’s very doable.”
