In light of THON occurring at Penn State from February twentieth to the twenty-second, I decided to search up stories that would benefit families medically. For a while, I couldn't find this particular type of story until today. Researchers may have found the solution to why older mothers have a higher risk of giving birth to children with birth defects.
Older mothers are prevalent in our society, and will continue to dramatically increase as time goes on. Women are nowadays encouraged to focus on their careers first before starting a family. The career I want to pursue, for example, requires me to dedicate at least a minimum of tens years after college to work on getting the degrees I need in order to be qualified for this job. With this alone, I would be at least thirty-two years old. In the news we always hear of either very young women giving birth or older women giving birth but how old exactly is too old?
Most women give birth at around their mid-twenties to their early thirties because this is considered the "healthy age" to give birth to children, but what if a mother wants children when she gets older? Why does she have to worry about other factors when involving the birth of her child as opposed to young mothers? There has to be something related to age to have this phenomena occur and researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University may have found the answer.
The group of families who participated in this research was families who went through genetic counseling through 23andMe. The disease in particular that was the pinpoint of the study was Down syndrome. Down syndrome is a common disorder when a person has an extra number twenty-one chromosome. In turn this individual may face many physical disabilities compared to a person with a regular set of 46 chromosomes.
With the data conducted it was seen that as maternal age increases, regulation of chromosomes becomes weaker, thus older mothers tend to give birth to children with genetic defects. With this research in the works, a greater understanding is achieved and scientists will be able to work on medications to help older mothers have a higher chance to giving birth to a healthy child. If it can work with Down syndrome, maybe other diseases such as pediatric cancer may be detectable in its early stages for many children.
I've had friends who, while pregnant, have qualified for additional screening tests because of their "advanced maternal age." This diagnosis of "advanced maternal age" has always come as a bit of a shock to them, considering that they're still in their mid-thirties. Future note: mid-thirties don't feel "advanced" when you're living those years. :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting post.
I've heard a lot about this topic recent years. From specials on TLC labeled "The World's Oldest Mother" to findings published by medical journals, it seems as though this is becoming a hot topic. I also remember hearing about women who freeze their eggs so if they decide to have children when they are older, they won't have birth defects and other problems as you have mentioned.
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