Many parameters dependent on the mother have an influence on the health of the child. And among them, a new one is added to the list: the weight of the future mother. Researchers from Hasselt University in Belgium have noticed that body mass index (BMI) of the mother before pregnancy affects the length of the baby’s telomeres, an indication of the age of its cells, or biological age.
Telomeres are structures that terminate chromosomes on either side of DNA strands. They protect them against degradation and thus participate in good conservation of the genome. Scientists measure their length in the number of DNA base pairs they represent.
For the needs of their study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, the researchers followed 743 future mothers aged 17 to 44, as well as their newborns, whose telomeres they measured in cord blood. The greater this length, the more the cell that carries theDNA can divide a large number of times, and therefore live a long time.
Shortened telomeres from birth
In adults, telomere length is correlated with the onset of age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes. In adulthood, a person loses between 32 and 45 base pairs of DNA on its telomeres per year. Scientists have found that in infants, each additional BMI point in the mother causes 50 base pairs of DNA to be lost on the telomeres. Or the equivalent of what an adult loses in a year to a year and a half. However, in wealthy Western societies, 30% of women of childbearing age are overweight, which corresponds to a BMI greater than 25.
To avoid any bias in their measurement, the researchers ruled out other factors that could influence telomere length, such as the age of the parents, socioeconomic class, the mother’s smoking status or birth weight.
Also to read:
If you don’t want your baby to be overweight, forget diet sodas
Can stress in childhood accelerate cellular aging
The first baby born to three parents