Does Having Kids Make Women Age Faster?
Dec. 23, 1999 (Atlanta) — Having babies takes years off mothers’ lives — if the mothers are fruit flies. A new study shows that the ability of fruit flies to lay eggs at an early age is directly linked to aging and early death. The extent to which these findings can be extended to humans, however, is by no means clear. “It is the direct impact of the early reproductive effort that causes this wave of death,” co-researcher Linda Partridge, PhD, tells WebMD. “Processes having to do with reproduction — processes that we would not recognize immediately as reproduction itself — may be in some way responsible for the damage that causes aging.” Partridge and her colleague Carla M. Sgrò, PhD, set up an elegant series of experiments to find out why greater reproductive activity reduces life span in many animal species. The results of the study are published in the current issue of the journal Science. The researchers first showed that fruit flies die sooner if they are genetically predispos
