Could biological clock be extended on purpose in the future?
Many women may want to have children later in life and to remove the pressures of the having children within their reproductive ages. New advancements may permit them to do so.
Advances in medicine and technology have led some researchers to believe that it may be possible to extend the time during which women can conceive children.
Dr. Nanette Santoro, a professor of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility & Reproductive Sciences at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, spoke to me about this landscape.
“Family building is going to be very different,” Santoro said. “I think people are going to be much more intentional about their family size. Many men will probably take the precaution of securing their gametes. Because, if the human lifespan continues to extend, then people are going to want to have families later and later in life.”
Menopause typically begins at 48, with cycle irregularities starting around that age. There is currently a medical movement to delay it because it causes symptoms. Santoro and other researchers are exploring whether the drug Rapamycin will delay its onset.
While many women may be happy they no longer have to deal with periods, others want to lengthen their biological clock. Santoro thinks that’s the area where it has the most women, especially those who were deprived of the ability to have a baby early in life because their ovaries were exposed to chemotherapy or too many surgeries.
“Those women would otherwise not be able to use their own eggs to have a baby,” Santoro said. “So if we could find ways to preserve their ovarian function, that'd be great.”
Artificial intelligence has begun to revolutionize reproductive medicine, just as it has other areas of expertise in healthcare. They can develop better predictive models of who is at risk for infertility. Some genes do that. They can also predict who is more likely to have ovarian cancer.
“If you know you're going to get your ovaries out to reduce cancer risk, then you could save your eggs, preserve those eggs, and you're able to reproduce,” Santoro said.
The reasons for attempting to do this may be because of the overall trend toward living longer. Because of this, milestones such as Menopause may make sense to push toward a later point, allowing people to live the lives they want, even if certain events, like having children, occur much later than expected or initially desired.
“Women in America are having babies at the oldest age that's ever been recorded for first births,” Santoro said. “So then it does make sense to use some of these technologies to keep fertility possible. And if you are going to live to be 90, is another 10 years of having your ovaries work and having menopause at 60 instead of 50? Is that better for you? That may be the case.”