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Abstract Background Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission among term neonates is a rare event. The aim of this study was to study the association of the NICU admission of term neonates on the risk of long-term childhood mortality. Methods A single-center case–control retrospective study between 2005 and 2019, including all in-hospital ≥ 37 weeks’ gestation singleton live-born neonates. The center perinatal database was linked with the birth and death certificate registries of the Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs. The primary aim of the study was to study the association between NICU admission and childhood mortality throughout a 15-year follow-up period. Results During the study period, 206,509 births were registered; 192,527 (93.22%) term neonates were included in the study; 5292 (2.75%) were admitted to NICU. Throughout the follow-up period, the mortality risk for term neonates admitted to the NICU remained elevated; hazard ratio (HR), 19.72 [14.66, 26.53], (p

Current social trends of delayed reproduction to the fourth and fifth decade of life call for a better understanding of reproductive aging. Demographic studies correlated late reproduction with general health and longevity. Telomeres, the protective ends of eukaryotic chromosomes, were implicated in various aging-associated pathologies and longevity. To examine whether telomeres are also associated with reproductive aging, we measured by Southern analysis the terminal restriction fragments (TRF) in leukocytes of women delivering a healthy infant following a spontaneous pregnancy at 43–48 years of age. We compared them to age-matched previously fertile women who failed to conceive above age 41. The average TRF length in the extended fertility group (9350 bp) was significantly longer than in the normal fertility group (8850 bp; p-value = 0.03). Strikingly, excluding women with nine or more children increased the difference between the groups to over 1000 bp (9920 and 8880 bp; p-value = 0.0009). Nevertheless, we observed no apparent effects of pregnancy, delivery, or parity on telomere length. We propose that longer leukocyte telomere length reflects higher oocyte quality, which can compensate for other limiting physiological and behavioral factors and enable successful reproduction. Leukocyte telomere length should be further explored as a novel biomarker of oocyte quality for assessing reproductive potential and integrating family planning with demanding women’s careers.