Researchers have revealed why aged women are more prone to suffer from miscarriage and infertility if they try to have babies in their later life. They have also exposed why babies born to women in their late thirties and forties are at higher risk of Down’s Syndrome and other hereditary conditions.
As women grow older, the levels of vital protein that helps eggs to get ready for the instant of fertilization decline piercingly, found team of researchers from Briton. The decline raised the risk that en egg will finish up with incorrect number chromosomes and get out of order.
Females are born with undeveloped egg cells that will last for their whole reproductive life. Each undeveloped egg consists of two sets of twenty-three chromosomes. Chromosomes are the chain of DNA that consists of directions on how to make and maintain individual. Before egg fertilization, they have to complete a complicated procedure of ripening known as meiosis in which half of them get rejected.
The remaining egg cell consists of only twenty-three threads of DNA, the gene passed down from a mother to her baby. The significant phase of meiosis occurs just before the ovulation process when big amount of DNA is evicted from the egg. If the process goes wrong, an egg can be left with wrong number of chromosomes.
In lab study over mice researchers from Newcastle Fertility Centre examined naturally occurring protein known as cohesion in young and old mice that holds chromosomes jointly in the eggs ready for expulsion of the superfluous DNA. The levels of cohesion decline with age and if there levels are too low then too many chromosomes can be evicted.
Eggs defective in that way can escort to a pregnancy with greater risk of miscarriage or to a birth of a Down’s syndrome baby. Their findings point out that cohesion is a major culprit n this process, explained lead researcher Dr Mary Herbert from the university’s Institute for Ageing and Health.
She added that further study would be required to see why cohesion was lost with age. By understanding that, they would be in a better position to know if there is likelihood of developing intercessions to reduce cohesin loss. Certainly, the best way for women to avoid this problem is to have their children earlier.