Effect of advanced parental age on pregnancy outcome and offspring health

Abstract

Purpose: Fertility at advanced age has become increasingly common, but the aging of parents may adversely affect the maturation of gametes and the development of embryos, and therefore the effects of aging are likely to be transmitted to the next generation. This article reviewed the studies in this field in recent years.

Methods: We searched the relevant literature in recent years with the keywords of "advanced maternal/paternal age" combined with "adverse pregnancy outcome" or "birth defect" in the PubMed database and classified the effects of parental advanced age on pregnancy outcomes and birth defects. Related studies on the effect of advanced age on birth defects were classified as chromosomal abnormalities, neurological and psychiatric disorders, and other systemic diseases. The effect of assisted reproduction technology (ART) on fertility in advanced age was also discussed.

Results: Differences in the definition of the range of advanced age and other confounding factors among studies were excluded, most studies believed that advanced parental age would affect pregnancy outcomes and birth defects in offspring.

Conclusion: To some extent, advanced parental age caused adverse pregnancy outcomes and birth defects. The occurrence of these results was related to the molecular genetic changes caused by aging, such as gene mutations, epigenetic variations, etc. Any etiology of adverse pregnancy outcomes and birth defects related to aging might be more than one. The detrimental effect of advanced age can be corrected to some extent by ART.

Keywords: ART; Advanced age; Adverse pregnancy outcomes; Birth defect.

Fig. 1

a The fertility rate of women of all ages at the time of birth of their first child from 2003 to 2015. b The average fertility rate for women of different ages from 2003 to 2015 (All data comes from data.stats.gov.cn/, except 2010)