Stop the "ticking clock"

Scientists have figured out how to rejuvenate eggs

Evgenia Efimova, Vesti

Many married couples today prefer to have children after the age of 30. But there is one "but": the quality and quantity of eggs in women decreases as they age. Scientists from the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales have figured out how to slow down the "ticking clock": they reversed the aging process of mouse eggs. The results of the study will help to create new drugs for the treatment of infertility in humans.

Recall that women are born with a set of eggs, which are getting smaller every year of life. This reduces fertility (the ability to produce offspring). At the moment when a woman loses most of her healthy eggs, she actually becomes infertile.

The time frame of this process is individual, but it is believed that fertility begins to decline at the age of 30 and falls strongly by about 45 years. Simply put, when planning a family, it is worth taking into account the age of a person. (By the way, older fathers transmit more mutations to their children than older mothers.)

Researchers of the Green Continent have suggested that a certain molecule is associated with a decrease in the quality of eggs in mice. It turned out that aging in rodents is accompanied by a decrease in the level of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). The latter is important for metabolism. A decrease in the number of these molecules affects the quality of the remaining eggs, which ultimately leads to fertility problems in old female mice.

Experts decided to find out how to restore the level of this important coenzyme. They were also interested to find out if it could delay the onset of infertility or even cure it.

The researchers gave mice oral doses of a precursor compound called nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN). Cells use NMN to produce NAD+, for this reason, an increase in the level of the former should contribute to an increase in the level of NAD+ and, as a result, improve fertility.

And such therapy really helped the rodents.

Figure from an article in Cell Reports – VM.

"High-quality eggs are necessary for the onset of a successful pregnancy, because they are responsible for almost all the building blocks needed by the embryo. We treated mice with low doses of NMN, adding them to drinking water for four weeks, and we managed to dramatically restore the quality of eggs and increase the number of births of cubs during the tests," says the head of the work, Professor Hayden Homer.

As noted above, such studies can help scientists create a new type of treatment for couples who want to improve their chances of conceiving a baby. But it's worth noting that the study is still at an early stage.

"Our results show that it is possible to restore the quality of eggs and, in turn, the reproductive function of women by oral administration of stimulating agents NAD. This method is much less invasive than IVF," Homer notes. However, he also adds that the effectiveness of such a method has yet to be tested in clinical trials.

A scientific article on the results of the study was published in the publication Cell Reports (Bertoldo et al., NAD⁺ Repletion Rescues Female Fertility during Reproductive Aging).

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