It is well established that the state of pregnancy imposes considerable physiological stress within the maternal compartment.

Based on this observation, pregnancy has been proposed to serve as a natural challenge that may reveal latent stress-related vulnerabilities of relevance for future disease risk.

However, a biomarker of the overall physiological toll imposed by pregnancy is currently lacking.

This study investigate the use of biological clocks to measure this overall toll on epigenetic age and speed of aging.