What Ovaries Reveal About the Secret Ways Women Age, According to Francesca Duncan

One of Duncan’s major findings is that ovaries become increasingly inflamed, fibrotic—or scarred—and stiff over time. This stiffness affects egg quality and can hinder egg release, Duncan says, and could increase risks of diseases including ovarian cancer.

Other organs, including the heart, lungs and liver, also become more fibrotic over time, and Duncan says the ovary could offer clues into aging across the body. “This is one of the reasons why I think studying the ovary is important. By comparing the ovary to these other organ systems, we could potentially really understand what’s happening and find shared mechanisms,” she says.

In April 2026, Duncan published a study that showed how post-menopausal ovaries—previously assumed to, as she put it, “just sit there and not do anything”—become more scarred and inflamed over time. Duncan says she was “totally stunned” by this discovery and says it’s possible that post-menopausal ovaries send out inflammatory signals that could be damaging to health. “I think this is a big frontier,” she says. “It highlights just how much we don’t know.”

Duncan’s lab is currently developing an ultrasound test to measure ovarian stiffness that she says could be used as a biomarker of aging and ovarian health, and also to predict outcomes of fertility treatments like in-vitro fertilization.

Already, researchers are exploring therapies based on the findings. Building on Duncan’s research, a group in China published a paper in February 2026 that showed how an existing anti-fibrotic drug could boost ovary function in mice and possibly people too. The drug appeared to restore fertility in women with primary ovarian insufficiency, which happens when the ovaries stop working normally before age 40. 

Earlier in her career, Duncan found that proteins known as cohesins diminish with age, leading to chromosomal instability and other problems. Now, in Germany, researchers are looking for therapeutic ways to replenish those proteins in the ovary as a way to enhance fertility. 

Though much is still unknown about the ovary’s link to health span, the field of aging research has finally come around to the idea, Duncan says. She remembers attending a program for early-career scientists in 2013 on the biology of aging, and feeling “totally like the oddball out.” 

“We had to go around the room and say what we worked on. I said I was studying the ovary, and everyone was like, ‘That’s nice. That’s not aging.’ And that was really the attitude for many years,” she says. But not anymore.