Stress During Pregnancy Accelerates Measures of Aging Across Generations in Rats

It was discovered comparatively recently that laboratory species exhibit a plasticity of life span that is passed across generations. This can be epigenetic, in which the offspring of calorie restricted parents exhibit some of the same metabolic responses to calorie restriction even in its absence. In the other direction, stresses in a parent during pregnancy can lead to an acceleration of degenerative aging in offspring. Researchers here demonstrate this second class of mechanism across four generations of rats, in which the final generation exhibits measurably accelerated manifestations of aging. One question that springs to mind is the degree to which differences in the gestational environment can explain the natural variation in aging within a mammalian species. How much of the distribution of life spans is this, versus later environmental circumstances such as exposure to pathogens? Experiences in early life may lay the foundation for age-related non-communicable disease (NCD) suseptibility. The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis postulates that many common NCDs originate in utero by re-programming fetal physiological and metabolic responses with lifelong consequences on organ and tissue function. The biological signatures linked to early life adversity are also transmitted across generations. Natural disaster and nutritional birth cohorts as well as experimental studies have demonstrated that remote ancestral adverse experienc...
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