It’s time to focus on reproductive longevity research
#time #focus #reproductive #longevity #research Welcome to InNewCL, here is the new story we have for you today:
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The woman’s ovaries age prematurely, more than twice as fast as other organs. Why this is so remains a mystery to scientists, making it one of the most important unanswered questions in reproductive health.
What we do know is that reproductive aging has a dramatic impact on women’s health. For example, as more and more women1 delay childbirth, it can lead to infertility, miscarriage and birth defects. Ovaries also produce hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, all of which are essential to overall health. Hormone levels fluctuate erratically during perimenopause. At menopause, they collapse to about zero. These hormonal changes lead to an increase in the risk of developing diseases such as dementia, metabolic disorders and depression. Half of postmenopausal women develop osteoporosis, more than twice as likely as men; Menopause quadruples the risk of a cardiovascular event. In short, menopause ages a woman’s body faster: indirectly, by disrupting the sleep cycle, and directly, by directly accelerating cellular aging by at least 6 percent.
The consequences of reproductive aging are profound, but we don’t understand the most basic things about them – what sets it in motion, why it varies so much from person to person, or why it happens so early. Persistent societal taboos, systematic gender bias in biomedical research, and severe research underfunding have limited progress in solving these problems. In 2023, however, multiple forces in society will finally come together to expand funding for female-focused research and harness scientific breakthroughs to extend reproductive longevity.
To solve the mystery of ovarian aging, over the last few years we have enlisted an army of scientists at the non-profit Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (GCRLE) to innovate and create a sustainable, high-impact field of research around women’s health build up . This effort will foster new collaborations and dialogue between industry and academic scientists that go beyond traditional models to accelerate the discovery of new products, diagnostics and therapies for women.
This year saw major scientific breakthroughs, including the first-ever comprehensive dataset on aging human ovaries, the discovery of a new signaling pathway that regulates ovarian function, and data showing that the ovarian microenvironment has a profound impact on oocyte aging . In 2023, this scientific advance will continue with the potential discovery of new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for the diagnosis and treatment of female infertility and menopause.
Women’s health is often treated as a niche subcategory of medicine, generating barely 1 percent of research funding and biopharmaceutical investment while affecting more than half of the world’s population. The neglect of women in research has long disadvantaged them. A glaring consequence, for example, is that more than 80 percent of drugs withdrawn from the market due to safety concerns are due to side effects in women. We also recently learned that men are more likely to have severe symptoms and die from SARS-CoV-2 than women. The discrepancy in outcomes between men and women infected with SARS-CoV-2 highlighted the high cost of ignoring women in biomedical research. In 2023, efforts to understand this biological variability will accelerate as more diagnostics and treatments optimized for both sexes are developed.
