Boys who smoke in their early teens risk damaging their future children’s genes, increasing their chances of developing asthma, obesity and poor lung function, a study suggests.
- Researchers have studied the biological mechanism behind the impact of fathers’ smoking in early adolescence on their children.
- According to their work, people whose fathers smoked in early adolescence had markers associated with asthma, obesity and low lung function in their genes.
- These new findings have important implications for public health as youth exposure to nicotine becomes more prevalent through vaping.
Exposure of young adolescents to cigarettes can harm the health of future generations, this is the observation made by an international team of researchers. Indeed, they discovered that boys who smoke in early adolescence risk transmitting lung and metabolic diseases to their future children.
Future fathers’ smoking can cause illness in their children
In the study published in Clinical Epigenetics, we learn that these diseases are expressed because of harmful epigenetic traits that are transmitted by future fathers. Epigenetics corresponds to the study “changes in gene activity, which do not involve modification of the DNA sequence and which can be transmitted during cell divisions“, indicates theInserm.
To carry out their work, researchers from the University of Southampton in England and the University of Bergen in Norway studied the epigenetic profiles of 875 people, aged 7 to 50, and the smoking behaviors of their fathers. They found epigenetic changes in 14 genes that are associated with asthma, obesity and wheezing in children of fathers who smoked before the age of 15.
Smoking in adolescence is the most dangerous for future generations
“Changes in epigenetic markers were much more pronounced in children whose fathers started smoking during puberty than in those whose fathers started smoking at any time before conception” says the paper’s co-lead author, Dr Negusse Kitaba, a research fellow at the University of Southampton.
The authors explain why the health of future generations depends on the actions and decisions made by young men long before they become parents: “The onset of puberty may represent a critical window of physiological changes in boys. This is when the stem cells that will produce sperm for the rest of their lives are established.“.
The vaping trend represents a real danger to health
In France, young people smoke less but electronic cigarettes are becoming more and more popular among adolescents, according to a study United Nations. This trend, observable in the whole world, does not reassure researchers.
“Some animal studies suggest that nicotine may be the substance in cigarette smoke that causes epigenetic changes in offspring“, explains Professor John Holloway, from the University of Southampton and the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Center in England, co-author of the study.It is therefore very worrying that today’s adolescents, particularly boys, are now being exposed to very high levels of nicotine through vaping.”, concluded the researcher.
