Certainly, one can become a father at any age, but it is not without risk for the baby.
Fathers who have children late increase the risk of severe schizophrenia in their offspring, according to a study published by Elsevier. The association between advanced paternal age and schizophrenia risk in children remained after accounting for the genetic predispositions of fathers and mothers to mental pathology.
“After controlling for parental polygenic risk scores, each additional decade of fathers increased the risk of early onset schizophrenia in children by about 30%,” said study lead author Shi-Heng. Wang, of China Medical University in Taichung. Maternal age, on the other hand, was not associated with schizophrenic risk in the unborn child. Early schizophrenia has been defined as onset before the age of 18, which tends to be a more severe form of the disease, as it is associated with more genetic abnormalities.
Gene mutations
“Advanced paternal age can be hypothesized to increase the risk of early schizophrenia because the extra years are associated with an accumulation of genetic mutations. But these age-related mutations appear to be distinct from those most commonly associated with at risk for schizophrenia. It would be important to understand the neural mechanisms by which advanced paternal age influences age of disease onset,” said John Krystal, editor-in-chief of Biological Psychiatry.
In France, about 600,000 people are said to be schizophrenic, and half of the patients have already made at least one suicide attempt. Schizophrenia is a severe and chronic mental disorder belonging to the class of psychotic disorders, which usually appears in early adulthood (between about 15 and 30 years old). Like other psychoses, schizophrenia is manifested by a loss of contact with reality and anosognosia, that is to say that the person who suffers from it is not aware of his illness (at least during the acute periods ).
hear voices
The most common symptoms are alterations in sensory processing (hallucination) and in thought functioning (ideas of reference, delirium). The schizophrenic person may hear voices that criticize him or comment on his actions, perceive objects or entities that are actually absent, or even give elements of the environment eccentric meanings. Typically, the schizophrenic person has the impression of being controlled by an external force, of no longer being in control of his thoughts or of being the target of a conspiracy with an ill-defined purpose.
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