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Around Eggs
19 September 2016

Around Eggs

With an increasing amount of women choosing to have children later in life, reproductive research has never been more important. Many studies have investigated why women are less able to produce healthy eggs as they get older, and why these unhealthy eggs often lead to miscarriages, birth defects and even infertility. But more recent research has looked into the environment where a woman’s eggs develop – the ovarian stroma. By contrasting the tissue of young mice (comparable with women in their early twenties) and older mice (comparable with women in their late thirties), researchers saw a large amount of scarring caused by an accumulation of collagen fibres (pictured) and inflammation. This altered, ageing environment could contribute to the decrease in quality of a woman’s eggs as she ages, and could provide a new route into delaying ovarian ageing.

Written by Katie Panteli

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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