Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Apr 4;25(1):395.
doi: 10.1186/s12884-025-07542-y.

Maternal telomere length and oxidative stress in pregnancy: cross-sectional analysis with an exploratory examination of systemic inflammation

Laura Etzel  1 , Qiaofeng Ye  2 , Abner T Apsley  2 , Chris Chiaro  2 , Lauren E Petri  2 , John Kozlosky  2 , Cathi Propper  3 , Roger Mills-Koonce  4 , Sarah J Short  5   6 , Patricia Garrett-Peters  1 , Idan Shalev  7
Affiliations

Maternal telomere length and oxidative stress in pregnancy: cross-sectional analysis with an exploratory examination of systemic inflammation

Laura Etzel et al. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. .

Abstract

Background: Telomere length (TL) is a marker of cellular aging associated with risk for age-related diseases and is known to be influenced by various factors, including oxidative stress and inflammation, in the contexts of stress and aging. The physiological demands of pregnancy may impact maternal TL, though research in this area is sparse. We tested oxidative stress and explored inflammation as predictors of maternal TL in a sample of women with normative pregnancies.

Methods: Participants (N = 88, aged 18 to 46 years, 25% non-Hispanic Black, 65% non-Hispanic White) were recruited during their 2nd or 3rd trimester. TL was measured using saliva via qPCR as absolute TL. Oxidative stress was derived from principal component analysis of selected metabolites measured via urinary metabolomics. Inflammation was quantified as total IL-6 in serum. Hypotheses were tested with stepwise generalized linear models.

Results: Longer TL was predicted by higher oxidative stress (b = 0.20 ± 0.08; P =.019), controlling for maternal age, gestational age, race/ethnicity, maternal BMI, and income-to-needs ratio. In our exploratory analysis, longer TL was also predicted by higher IL-6 (b = 0.76 ± 0.20; P =.0003) controlling for covariates. There was no significant interaction between oxidative stress and inflammation predicting TL.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that in normative pregnancies, both oxidative stress and inflammation are independently associated with longer telomere length. Given that these associations are inconsistent with the role of oxidative stress and inflammation on telomere biology in non-pregnant samples, future work should aim to replicate these findings in both normal and high-risk pregnancies, explore mechanisms underlying these associations using longitudinal designs, and examine how these relationships influence maternal and fetal health.

Keywords: Biological aging; Inflammation; Oxidative stress; Pregnancy; Telomere length.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institutional Review Board (#17-1914) approved the study, and informed consent was obtained from all participants. This study was conducted in adherence to the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Correlations among TL, predictors, and demographic variables; red = negative correlation, blue = positive correlation, darkness of color indicates strength. Correlations meeting P <.05 are bold. See Supplemental File S6 for full correlations and p-values
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Hauspurg A, Countouris ME, Catov JM. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and future maternal health: how can the evidence guide postpartum management?? Curr Hypertens Rep. 2019;21(12):96. 10.1007/s11906-019-0999-7 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hauspurg A, Ying W, Hubel CA, Michos ED, Ouyang P. Adverse pregnancy outcomes and future maternal cardiovascular disease. Clin Cardiol. 2018;41(2):239–46. 10.1002/clc.22887 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Panelli DM, Wang X, Mayo J, et al. Association of pregnancy complications and postpartum maternal leukocyte telomeres in two diverse cohorts: a nested case-control study. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2024;24(1):490. 10.1186/s12884-024-06688-5 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Panelli DM, Bianco K. Cellular aging and telomere dynamics in pregnancy. Curr Opin Obstet Gynecol. 2022;34(2):57–61. 10.1097/GCO.0000000000000765 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Etzel LC, Shalev I. Effects of psychological stress on telomeres as genome regulators. Stress: genetics, epigenetics and genomics. Elsevier. 2021;109–17. 10.1016/B978-0-12-813156-5.00009-1

LinkOut - more resources