Barcelona, April 29, 2026 – Despite affecting half of the world's population, menopause has historically been understudied and misunderstood, both in biomedical research and clinical practice. However, with the increase in life expectancy, the number of women in the postmenopausal stage continues to grow and, in 2021, those over 50 already represented 26% of the world's population, according to the WHO.
Its effects go far beyond the reproductive system and are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular, metabolic, neurodegenerative, and bone diseases. Nevertheless, few studies analyzed in depth how this process affects the female reproductive system as a whole, beyond the ovaries.
In this context, a new study by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), published in Nature Aging, presents the first large-scale atlas of female reproductive system aging, providing a new vision of how this process impacts health.
Through the integration of 1,112 tissue images from 659 samples, coming from 304 women between 20 and 70 years old, and the analysis of the expression of thousands of genes, the work reconstructed the aging trajectory in seven reproductive organs: uterus, ovary, vagina, cervix, breast, and Fallopian tubes.
Thus, leveraging the high image classification capacity of artificial intelligence and the supercomputing resources of MareNostrum 5, the researchers used techniques such as deep learning to identify both observable changes in tissues and the molecular processes associated with aging in each organ.
The results show that not all organs age uniformly or linearly: while the ovary and vagina present a progressive aging that begins years before menopause, the uterus experiences much more abrupt changes around this time.
The analysis also reveals that not only do organs age differently, but so do the tissues within the same organ, such as the mucosa or the uterine muscle, which are especially sensitive to changes associated with menopause.
"Until now, we tended to consider menopause mainly as the end of the ovary's reproductive function. However, our results show that it acts as a turning point that profoundly reorganizes other organs and tissues of the reproductive system, and allow us to identify the genes and molecular processes that could be behind these changes," explained Marta Melé, leader of the Transcriptomics and Functional Genomics group at BSC and director of the study.
Toward non-invasive monitoring
The study also identified molecular signals associated with aging that can be detected in blood, after analyzing blood plasma samples from 21,441 women. These biomarkers would allow for the non-invasive monitoring of the state of reproductive organs and the anticipation of risks associated with menopause, such as pelvic floor prolapse or other complications. Furthermore, they could be detected without the need for biopsies, facilitating more accessible and less invasive follow-up.
"We not only identified the molecular changes underlying the aging of these organs, but we also saw that they can be detected in blood, which opens the door to new clinical tools," added Oleksandra Soldatkina, first co-author of the study and researcher at BSC.
In a context of increasing life expectancy, understanding how the reproductive system ages is key to improving the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of multiple associated diseases. This study represents an important step toward a more complete understanding of female aging and lays the foundations for a more precise and equitable medicine in women's health.
