Pregnancy, preeclampsia and maternal aging: From epidemiology to functional genomics

Women live longer than men but experience greater disability and a longer period of illness as they age. Despite clear sex differences in aging, the impact of pregnancy and its complications, such as preeclampsia, on aging is an underexplored area of geroscience. This review summarizes our current knowledge about the complex links between pregnancy and age-related diseases, including evidence from epidemiology, clinical research, and genetics. We discuss the relationship between normal and pathological pregnancy and maternal aging, using preeclampsia as a primary example. We review the results of human genetics studies of preeclampsia, including genome wide association studies (GWAS), and attempted to catalog genes involved in preeclampsia as a gateway to mechanisms underlying an increased risk of later life cardio- and neuro- vascular events. Lastly, we discuss challenges in interpreting the GWAS of preeclampsia and provide a functional genomics framework for future research needed to fully realize the promise of GWAS in identifying targets for geroprotective prevention and therapeutics against preeclampsia.