New mothers’ lack of sleep ‘can age them by seven years’: Tiredness in the first six months after birth can have drastic effect on biological age, study shows
Experts studied 33 mothers during pregnancies and the first year of babies’ lives
Results showed lack of sleep adds up to seven years to biological age of mothers
Problem could also leave mothers more susceptible to cancer and heart disease
By Daily Mail Reporter
Published: | Updated:
Lack of sleep in the first six months after having a baby can add up to seven years to the biological age of new mothers, a study reveals.
Researchers said the findings mean that those who complain of sleepless nights taking years off their life may well be right.
The problem could also leave them more susceptible to cancer and cardiovascular disease, added the scientists.
They studied 33 mothers during their pregnancies and the first year of their babies’ lives, analysing their DNA to determine their ‘biological age’, which can differ from chronological age.
A year after giving birth, the biological age of those who slept less than seven hours a night at the six-month mark was three to seven years older than those who logged seven hours or more.
Researchers say a lack of sleep in the first six months after having a baby can add up to seven years to the biological age of new mothers and make them more susceptible to cancer
Mothers who slept less than seven hours also had shorter telomeres, or pieces of DNA, in their white blood cells.
This has been linked to serious health problems, said the study in the journal Sleep Health.
Lead author Professor Judith Carroll, of the University of California in Los Angeles, said: ‘Sleep health is just as vital to overall health as diet and exercise.’
She added: ‘The early months of postpartum sleep deprivation could have a lasting effect on physical health.
‘We know from a large body of research that sleeping less than seven hours a night is detrimental to health and increases the risk of age-related diseases.’
While participants’ nightly sleep ranged from five to nine hours, more than half were getting less than seven hours – both six months and one year after giving birth, the researchers found.
Mothers who slept less than seven hours had shorter pieces of DNA in their white blood cells which has been linked to serious health problems, said the study in the journal Sleep Health
Prof Carroll, a member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA’s Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour, urged new mothers take advantage of opportunities to get a little extra sleep, like taking naps during the day when their babies are asleep, accepting offers of help from family and friends, and when possible, asking their partners to help with the baby during the night or early morning.
Co-author Christine Dunkel Schetter, a distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at UCLA, said that while accelerated biological aging linked to sleep loss may increase women’s health risks, it doesn’t automatically cause harm to their bodies.
She added: ‘We don’t want the message to be that mothers are permanently damaged by infant care and loss of sleep. We don’t know if these effects are long lasting.’
The greater an individual’s biological, or epigenetic age, the greater their risk of disease and earlier death, the researchers warned.
The UCLA research was published in the journal Sleep Health.
Stress levels rose the most, with a “record-high 40% of adults worldwide” saying they experienced stress “a lot of the previous day,” according to Gallup’s 2021 Global Emotions Index. That was the highest level in the 15 years, the report said.
Globally, women with young children at home bore the brunt of the stress, worry, anger and sadness that peopleexperienced during the pandemic of 2020.
Stress increased in half of the 116 countries surveyed, with “double-digit increases in stress in 21 countries,” the report said. That means almost 190 million more people worldwide experienced significant stress last year than in years past.
Sickness and death from Covid-19 was obviously a huge part of the stress and negative emotions, as was the economic impact of the pandemic, the survey found.
“Half of those working at the time of the pandemic said they earned less money because of COVID-19, and 32% of people said they lost their job,” Jon Clifton, Gallup’s global managing partner, wrote in his opening statement on the survey.
“In all, 80% of people said COVID-19 affected them in some way.”
Not every country experienced stress during 2020, the report noted. It ranged from a high of 66% in Peru, “which represents a new high for the country,” to a “low of 13% in Kyrgyzstan, where stress levels have historically been low and stayed low in 2020,” the report said.
A negative trend continues
For 15 consecutive years, polling giant Gallup has asked people around the world about their positive and negative emotions. For this report, Gallup surveyed nationally representative samples of 160,000 people from 116 countries during 2020 and early 2021.
Just as it did in 2019, Iraq led the world on the negative experience index in 2020. Gallup found 56% of Iraqis said they experienced pain, 51% reported anger and 50% reported sadness.
Taiwan scored lowest on the negative emotion index, the same ranking it attained in 2019.
Globally, the increase in negative emotions actually began 10 years ago, the report said. One key reason is political and economic upheaval. Partly for those reasons, people in Lebanon and Turkey reported few positive experiences in the survey.
“The majority of Lebanese people have not experienced enjoyment in their daily lives since 2018, and for Turks, this has been true since 2017,” the report said.
Besides political and economic turmoil, another reason for negativity in many nations was a growing belief that both governments and businesses are corrupt.
“Majorities of people believe corruption is widespread in the governments of 79 out of 101 countries and areas in the world, and a majority in 85 out of 110 countries think this is true of businesses,” Clifton wrote in his introductory remarks.
Income inequality is another factor in how people view their lives, Clifton continued: “Many countries that report high income inequality also happen to be the countries that report a lot of negative emotions, such as anger.”
Resilience still prevailed
While negative emotions rose, many people in the world showed surprising resilience, the survey found. For their positive emotion index, the polling group asked questions about feeling respected and well rested, doing interesting or enjoyable activities, and smiling and laughing.
Results showed that globally, humankind managed to remain stable in positive emotions despite the negativeimpact of the pandemic — with the exception of laughing and smiling.
“In the span of a year, the percentage of people who said they smiled or laughed a lot the previous day dropped from 75% to 70%, which is also the lowest measure Gallup has ever recorded for this question,” the report said.
El Salvador led the world in positivity, with an index score of 82. Latin American countries have traditionally dominated the positive index, and Nicaragua, Paraguay and Colombia also had high scores. Three Nordic countries, Iceland, Norway and Finland — who are traditionally in the top 10 on rankings of national happiness — also had high scores.
The United States did not rank in the top 10 in positivity. But Gallup interviews done for the survey in early 2021, around the time vaccines were being approved, found people’s ratings of their lives rebounded and hit “new all-time highs,” the report said.
Using 27 years of detailed data on hyena social interactions, a team led by Penn biologists nailed down a pattern of social network inheritance and its implications for social structure, rank, and survival. Credit: Kate Shaw Yoshida
Using 27 years of detailed data on hyena social interactions, a team led by Penn biologists nailed down a pattern of social network inheritance and its implications for social structure, rank, and survival.
Hyenas are a highly social species, living in groups that can number more than 100. But within their clans, there is order: A specific matrilineal hierarchy governs societies in this species where females are dominant to males.
While researchers have intensively studied the social structure of hyenas and other animals, it’s only recently that scientists have begun to investigate how this structure arises. A new study led by Penn biologists, which relies upon 27 years of detailed observations of hyena social behavior collected by researchers at Michigan State University, pulls back the curtain on how social order comes to be.
Their findings show that hyenas inherit their mother’s social networks, so their social connections resemble their mother’s. However, offspring of higher-ranking individuals more faithfully replicate their mother’s interactions, winding up with social networks that more closely resemble their mother’s than do offspring of females that rank lower on the clan’s social ladder. The team reported their findings in the journal Science.
Hyenas benefit from being born to high-ranking mothers, from whom they inherit their social networks, according to research led by biologists from Penn and Michigan State University. Credit: Kate Shaw Yoshida
“We knew that the social structure of hyenas is based in part on one’s rank in the agonistic hierarchy, which we know is inherited from mothers,” says Erol Akçay, a study coauthor and associate professor in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences. “But what we found, that affiliative, or friendly interactions, are also inherited, hadn’t been shown.”
“This is a very simple process of social inheritance that we show works very, very well,” says Amiyaal Ilany, a senior lecturer at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. “Individuals that were born to higher rank are more accurate in their inheritance, and they have good reason to do so. It fits well with what is already known about inheritance of rank. There are very strict rules about what place you sit in the hierarchy if you are a hyena.”
The work builds on a theoretical model of social network inheritance Akçay and Ilany developed in 2016. According to that simple framework, animals establish their networks by “social inheritance,” or copying their mother’s behaviors. The model fits well with snapshots of real-world social networks from not only hyenas but also three other social species: bottle-nosed dolphins, rock hyrax, and sleepy lizards.
Young hyenas essentially duplicated the social group of their mothers, even as cubs grew older and stopped spending as much time in close proximity to their moms. Credit: Kate Shaw Yoshida
In the new work, the team aimed to refine their model to better understand the intricacies of social inheritance in hyenas. They were fortunate to have a robust dataset collected by Akçay and Ilany’s coauthor, zoologist Kay Holekamp of Michigan State University, consisting of 27 years of detailed accounting of a clan’s social interactions.
“We realized we could use that dataset to directly test our model, to see if social ties are inherited or not,” Akçay says.
Field biologists from Holekamp’s research group had meticulously tracked how hyenas in a clan interacted, including who spent time with whom as well as the social rank of each member. To do so, researchers spent months getting to know each member of the clan by sight.
The social rank of a mother was felt deeply by her cubs. “Rank is super important,” says Akçay. “If you’re born to a lower-ranked mother, you are less likely to survive and to reproduce.” Credit: Kate Shaw Yoshida
“They are there year-round, every day, identifying individuals by their specific spot patterns and other characteristics,” Ilany says.
These observations allowed Akçay, Ilany, and Holekamp to map out hyenas’ social networks based on which individuals spent time close together.
“This use of proximity to track social networks isn’t possible with humans, as two strangers might randomly get into an elevator together,” Ilany says. “But with hyenas, if one individual gets within a few meters of another, that suggests that they have a social connection.”
With this picture of each individual’s social affiliations in hand, the researchers compared the social networks of mothers to their offspring. “We developed a new metric to measure social inheritance, to track how faithfully an offspring’s network reproduces its mother’s network,” Akçay says.
Hyena cubs stick close to their mothers for the first couple years of life, so the networks of mothers and their offsprings were quite similar to start. However, the researchers noticed that even as the young stopped spending so much time in close proximity to their mothers they still sustained quite similar networks, particularly for female offspring, who generally remain members of the clan for life. “We have data in some cases showing that the network similarity between mothers and offspring, especially female offspring, was still very high after six or so years,” says Ilany. “You may not be seeing your mother as often, or she even may have died, but you still have similar friends.”
This pattern was especially strong for the higher-ranking mothers, for whom social inheritance was the strongest in the group.
“That is kind of intuitive because things like that happen in human society as well,” Akçay says. “It happens so much we take it for granted. We inherit social connections, and there’s a lot of social science research that shows that this has a huge influence on people’s life trajectory.”
Offspring of lower-ranking mothers were less likely to reproduce their mother’s social networks, perhaps trying to compensate for their more lowly origins by associating with a greater variety of individuals.
There is no genetic inheritance of rank or close associates in this species, so in Holekamp’s opinion one of the most remarkable things about the phenomenon documented here is that the youngsters’ relationships with their mothers’ close associates are all learned very early in life. One explanation for why inheritance of social networks works better for high- than for low-ranking hyenas may be that low-ranking females tend to go off on their own more often to avoid competition with higher-ranking hyenas, so their cubs have fewer learning opportunities than cubs of high-ranking females.
Mother-offspring pairs with more similar social networks also lived longer, the team found. This effect on survivorship may owe to the fact that offspring who spend more time with their mothers and thus replicate their social networks benefit from the increased care.
Social rank also had an effect on survivorship and reproductive success.
“Rank is super important,” says Akçay. “If you’re born to a lower-ranked mother, you are less likely to survive and to reproduce.”
The researchers note that social network inheritance likely contributes to a group’s stability and also has implications for how behaviors are learned and spread through groups.
The study also underscores how factors other than genetics hold sway in key evolutionary outcomes, including reproductive success and overall survival. “A lot of things that are considered by default to be genetically determined may depend on environmental and social processes,” says Ilany.
Reference: “Rank-dependent social inheritance determines social network structure in spotted hyenas” by Amiyaal Ilany, Kay E. Holekamp and Erol Akçay, 16 July 2021, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abc1966
Erol Akçay is an associate professor of biology in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
Amiyaal Ilany is a senior lecturer at the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship working with Akçay at Penn.
Kay Holekamp is a professor of zoology at Michigan State University.
The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grants 244/19 and 245/19), U.S. Army Research Office (Grant W911NF-17-1-0017), Israel-U.S. Binational Science Foundation (grants 2015088 and 2019156), and National Science Foundation (grants 1853934 and 1755089).
To mark the UK’s day of reflection next Tuesday on the anniversary of the first national lockdown, the Duke of Sussex has written the foreword for “Hospital by the Hill,” a book project from the Hampshire child bereavement support charity, Simon Says.
It follows the story of a young person coping with the death of their mother, who had been working in a local hospital on the frontline of the coronavirus crisis.
“If you are reading this book, it’s because you’ve lost your parent or a loved one, and while I wish I was able to hug you right now, I hope this story is able to provide you comfort in knowing that you’re not alone,” Harry’s message begins.
He then draws on his own experience with bereavement at a young age, and reflects on how it made him feel.
“When I was a young boy I lost my mum. At the time I didn’t want to believe it or accept it, and it left a huge hole inside of me. I know how you feel, and I want to assure you that over time that hole will be filled with so much love and support,” Harry continues.
“We all cope with loss in a different way, but when a parent goes to heaven, I was told their spirit, their love and the memories of them do not. They are always with you and you can hold onto them forever. I find this to be true.”
The prince ends the introduction by sharing his understanding of loneliness and grief, telling readers that the “feeling will pass.”
“And I will make a promise to you — you will feel better and stronger once you are ready to talk about how it makes you feel.”
Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 alongside her partner, Dodi Fayed, and driver, Henri Paul, as their vehicle was being chased by paparazzi on motorcycles.
Harry is expected to join his brother, William, in July when a statue of Diana is installed at Kensington Gardens in London. The sculpture was commissioned by the Duke of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex and is set to be unveiled on what would have been the Princess of Wales’ 60th birthday.
It will be the first time the pair have seen each other since Harry moved to California with his family. Harry recently referenced a rift with William in his sit-down with Oprah.
Both Harry and his brother William have previously revealed their own mental health struggles in the wake of their mother’s death. Speaking in a 2019 BBC documentary, the Duke of Cambridge said he felt “pain like no other” after her death and encouraged people to be more open with their personal feelings and struggles.
“I think when you are bereaved at a very young age — any time really, but particularly at a young age, I can resonate closely to that — you feel pain like no other pain, and you know that in your life it’s going to be very difficult to come across something that’s going to be even worse pain than that,” William said.
Harry told a British newspaper podcast in 2017 that he sought counseling to deal with his grief after his brother suggested he seek professional help.
“I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but also my work as well,” Harry said. “Then I started to have a few conversations and then, all of a sudden, all of this grief that I’d never processed came to the forefront. I was like, ‘There’s actually a lot of stuff here I need to deal with.'”
Simon Says founder Sally Stanley said the idea for a new book to help bereaved children of key workers emerged last spring.
Stanley said the death of a loved one is “difficult at any time in the life of a child or young person” but the measures introduced to combat the virus “make it much harder for them to say goodbye in the way that we are used to.”
“I hope that this book will help children and young people to remember their special person whose work was to help others,” she added.
Author Chris Connaughton said he felt “privileged” for the opportunity to write the book and tackle such emotional issues for young people.
“I wanted it to provide a connection, support and hope through the hard and horrible times of bereavement,” he said.
He added that it was an honor to have Prince Harry’s support for the project “and share his open, heartfelt and honest words with kids across the country.”
The book, which will be available to any young person in the UK who has been affected by the death of a key worker, highlights the services available from three bereavement organizations — Simon Says, Child Bereavement UK and Winston’s Wish.
A Connecticut mother has been arrested after allegedly admitting to killing her 4-year-old son, authorities said Sunday.
New London police responded at approximately 6:27 a.m. Sunday morning to a report of a female damaging a parked vehicle with a bat outside of an apartment at 242 Nautilus Drive.
Upon arrival on scene, police made contact with the owner of the vehicle. The reported female suspect, later identified as 33-year-old Tiffany Farrauto, had left the scene prior to police arrival.
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While on scene with the vehicle owner, Farrauto approached police and informed them that she had “strangled” her four-year-old son, who was located inside the apartment.
New London Police Chief Peter Reichard said at a news conference Sunday that Farrauto told officers to “take me away.” When one of the officers asked her why she wanted them to take her away, “she indicated that she harmed her son and that her son was in the apartment,” Reichard alleged.
Police immediately entered the apartment, where they found an unconscious and unresponsive young male child. Officers instantly began CPR in an attempt to resuscitate the child, while notifying emergency medical personnel. The child was later transported to L+M Hospital by the New London Fire Department. The child was pronounced deceased shortly after arriving at the hospital by medical staff.
The scene was immediately secured and detectives responded to investigate the incident. The New London Judicial District State’s Attorney’s Office, the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Unit-Eastern District, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner were notified and responded to the scene as well.
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Farrauto was initially arrested for two counts of criminal mischief in the third degree. Following additional investigation, Farrauto was also charged with murder and risk of injury to a minor.
Tiffany Farrauto (Courtesy of New London Police Department)
While talking about the child’s death during Sunday’s press conference, Reichard began to get emotional.
“I talked to the officers who first arrived to the scene. They were choked up by it. All of them have children the same age and it hits home. It hits you right in the gut,” Reichard said while trying to hold back tears. “I then proceeded to the emergency room myself where several more of my officers and the entire emergency room staff were. It hits home with them too and they do these things every day. It’s not easy.”
Reichard added that he would not publicly identify the boy until the child’s father and family could be notified first. Police offered their condolences to the child’s family in a statement posted on the department’s Facebook page.
An investigation into the incident remains ongoing. An autopsy will be performed on Monday to determine the child’s cause of death. Farrauto, who is being held on a $2 million bond, will also undergo DNA testing, Reichard said.
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Anyone who has information concerning this investigation is encouraged to contact the New London Police Department’s detective bureau at 860-447-1481. Anonymous tips may be submitted via the New London Tips 411 system by texting NLPDTip plus the information to Tip411 (847411).
Rakhi Sawant is happy and satisfied with the way her journey on Bigg Boss 14 culminated. The Pardesiya girl was probably the only contestant this season to have taken an effort to entertain the audience. While Rubina Dilaik was announced as the winner, Rakhi Sawant walked out of the game show with Rs 14 lakh prize money.
The OG Bigg Boss champion spoke to indianexpress.com about her decision to quit in the finale, her experience and how host Salman Khan’s support helped her survive the game.
Excerpts from the conversation…
How does it feel to be touted as the ‘real entertainment queen’ of Bigg Boss?
I am so happy that I made the decision of coming back to the show. I really can’t express my gratitude for the way people have loved me. I have no regrets from my journey, especially on opening up about my marriage. All this while, I have been mum about it, and when you are in a show like Bigg Boss, and no one believes what you say, you tend to break down. I am thankful that I got the opportunity to open up about my life on the platform. The show gave me so much love that while I am here, I feel my soul is still in the house.
You were a part of the first season, and now this one. How different were both the journeys for you?
There were a lot of differences. When we did the first season, we had no idea about cameras or what kind of content works. People who kept a low profile like Rahul Roy went on to win the season. Now, there has been a natural upgrade, and contestants have realised the worth of entertainment. One has to fight, compete in tasks and assure they get enough audience votes to keep them safe. One has to be a package and not sit in a corner hoping to win. I am a born entertainer, and I did exactly what I do in real life. And I am so glad people loved me and made me reach so far. Given you had so much love, what made you walk out of the show at the last moment, picking the money bag?
It was just a matter of a few hours, and at the end only one had to win. If I would have lost, I would be left with nothing. At least, I have a huge sum of money with me now. I have zero bank balance at the moment, and I needed the money for my mother’s medical needs. I have spent all my savings in the last few years on her surgeries, and needed financial backing. I have no regrets, as that moment all I could think of was the growing bills that I need to pay soon.
You were the only contestant who had no social media team or PR while inside the house.
It all happened so quickly that I got no time. I gave my phone to my maid, and she has no clue how to use social media. I didn’t even get time to shop for makeup and clothes. I am glad that even without a PR machinery, I managed to win audiences’ love.
A section of viewers feels that you spoke about your marriage and even created Julie just for content.
I spoke about my marriage during the low moments while in the house. As for Julie, Rahul Mahajan spoke ill about my profession and how my fans were cheap. I was really upset and did not know how to express myself. I was even lonely and had no one to talk. When I came back from my shower that day, Julie was in me. You may call it fake content or entertainment but Julie helped me survive the game. She is my strong alter ego.
You were also accused of crossing your lines with Abhinav Shukla, when you pulled his shorts strings.
I don’t think there’s any line when it comes to love. I just wanted to have some good moments with him. Also, I did not cross any lines. I know my boundaries. I was given the task to be around him, and in a reflex moment, I did pull the strings, but his shorts didn’t fall off. So why make a hue and cry about it.
Apart from the audiences’ love you also had Salman Khan’s support throughout. What do you have to say about it?
He is a rockstar, and a legend in true self. He really supported me a lot, and I don’t think I would have managed to survive the game without him. When Jasmin hit me on my nose, I was in immense pain and wanted to leave but he gave me strength. Salman and the love of the audience helped me bear all the pain.
What has been the best and worst moments for you in Bigg Boss 14?
The worst was when Jasmin attacked me with the duck’s head. And I think every second I spent inside was best for me. I can still visualise each moment clearly. Bigg Boss is in my blood, in my DNA now, and whenever the show needs me, I will come running back.
Apart from Rakhi and Rubina, the other finalists of Bigg Boss 14 included Rahul Vaidya, Aly Goni and Nikki Tamboli.
The body was reportedly discovered by a cleaner (stock photo)
Police in Japan have arrested a woman after the body of her dead mother was discovered in a freezer in her flat.
Yumi Yoshino, 48, said that she found her mother dead and hid the body 10 years ago because she “didn’t want to move out” of the Tokyo home they shared, local media reported, citing unnamed police sources.
There were no visible wounds on the frozen body, police said.
The authorities could not determine the time and cause of the woman’s death.
The body was reportedly discovered by a cleaner after Ms Yoshino had been forced to leave the apartment due to missing rent payments.
The body had been bent to fit in the freezer, police said.
Ms Yoshino was arrested in a hotel in the city of Chiba, near Tokyo, on Friday.
The findings also suggest that vaccinating pregnant women might protect their unborn babies, as well, the researchers said — and it’s worth studying the possibility. Pregnant women are advised to get influenza vaccines to protect both themselves and their babies.
Newborn specialist Dr. Dustin Flannery of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and colleagues studied more than 1,400 mothers and newborns. They found that protective IgG antibodies were transferred across the placenta in 72 out of 83 infected or previously infected pregnant women they studied.
None of the babies of infected mothers developed coronavirus infection. And 60% of the women who had antibodies to coronavirus had no symptoms, the researchers reported.
“Could maternal antibodies help delay the onset of infection or protect the infant from becoming infected, having severe disease, or dying of COVID-19?” asked Dr. Flor Munoz, a molecular virologist at the Baylor College of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.
Newborns are vulnerable to infection, and any protection would be welcome, Munoz wrote in an accompanying commentary. But it’s also known that antibodies against other viruses, such as influenza or tetanus, wear off quickly when passed from mother to infant during pregnancy, so it would be important to study when and how to vaccinate infants, Munoz said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends immunizing babies against the flu at six months, for instance, even if the mothers were vaccinated during pregnancy.
“To what extent can antibodies transferred through breast milk protect lactating newborns?” Munoz asked.
“Should infants be vaccinated regardless of maternal infection, and if so, what is the best timing to initiate infant vaccines? Is there a potential detrimental effect of maternal antibodies on infant responses to active immunization? And what would be the optimal vaccine and vaccination regimen for infants, considering their risk and unique immunologic needs?”
A Japanese woman who said she hid her mother’s corpse in a freezer in her apartment for a decade told police she feared eviction if the death was discovered, according to reports.
Yumi Yoshino, 48, was held “on suspicion of abandoning and hiding a female body” found on Wednesday inside the freezer in a Tokyo apartment, police said.
Yoshino said that when her mother died about 10 years ago she hid the body because she feared she would be forced to move out of the flat they shared, local media reported, citing unnamed police sources.
The mother, thought to be aged around 60 at the time of her death, was named on the lease of the apartment in a municipal housing complex, Kyodo News said.
Yoshino had been forced to leave the apartment in mid-January after missing rent payments, the reports said, and a cleaner discovered the body in a freezer hidden in a closet.
An autopsy could not determine the time and cause of woman’s death, the reports said.
