Preconception telomere length as a novel maternal biomarker to assess the risk of spina bifida in the offspring.
Damiat Aoulad FaresSarah Schalekamp-TimmermansTim S NawrotRégine P M Steegers-TheunissenPublished in: Birth defects research (2020)
From this background, we hypothesize that preconceptional long term exposure to harmful environmental and lifestyle risk factors accelerates a woman's aging process, which can be measured by TL, and thereby her underlying risk of NTD offspring. Alternatively, it might be that women with an increased NTD risk already exhibit a more advanced biological age before the onset of pregnancy compared to women of identical calendar age.