This one's for you, moms over 35. A recent study says that children born to older mothers are less likely to develop diseases as they age.
For the study), researchers compared the health of 18,000 adults born to woman of two age ranges: 25 to 34 years old and 35 to 44 years old. After 10 years of evaluation, researchers found that children born to mothers over 35 were just as likely to develop disease as their counterparts.
Researchers did notice, however, that those born to younger moms had more health issues than others. They found that people born to women ages 20 to 24 suffered from five percent more diseases than those born to mothers ages 25 and older. The statistic was worse for those born to mother under the age of 19 — an alarming 15 percent!
Lead researcher Mikko Myrskylä of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany notes that while older mothers do have a higher risk of miscarriage, they are not higher risk for carrying diseases. We find this particularly interesting, since the older moms we know are often considered high-risk during pregnancy and worry about how their age could affect their babies. And one recent studysuggested that babies born to older dads were more likely to have autism and other diseases.
"With respect to adult age, early births appear to be more dangerous for children than late ones," Myrskylä says.
Were you the child of an older parent? What do you think of the study?