Parents with alcohol use disorders can pass on symptoms of premature aging to their children that affect them into adulthood.
- Children inherit mitochondrial dysfunction resulting from their parents’ drug addiction, a new study finds.
- This dysfunction causes these people to show early signs of age-related diseases while they are still considered young, usually around their forties.
- “The more you, as a parent-to-be, work to adopt a healthy mindset and lifestyle, the more significant the impact you will have on your child’s health, both from birth and into their 20s and 40s,” the authors say.
“Although adverse changes in mitochondrial morphology and function are widely described symptoms of fetal alcohol exposure, no cohort has followed these mitochondrial deficits into adulthood or determined whether they predispose individuals with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder to accelerated biological aging,” said researchers from Texas A&M University (USA). That’s why they decided to conduct a study, the results of which were published in the journal Aging and Disease.
As part of the research, the team conducted experiments on mice to compare markers of cellular senescence and age-related outcomes induced by maternal, paternal, and both parental alcohol exposure. As a reminder, senescence is a key marker of aging, particularly in the brain, where it leads to cognitive dysfunction and memory problems. In detail, this biological condition, which develops as we age, occurs when cells slow down and stop dividing, limiting the body’s ability to replace cells that deteriorate.
Fetal alcohol syndrome: senescence, an early symptom of aging in children
The authors found that even in midlife, adult offspring of alcohol-exposed parents exhibited significant increases in markers of stress-induced premature cellular senescence in the brain and liver, including upregulation of cell cycle inhibitory proteins and increased activity of senescence-associated β-galactosidase. Clearly, senescence is also one of the early symptoms of aging that offspring can inherit from parents who abuse alcohol.
Another finding: in male descendants, the team observed an increase in fat in the liver, which creates scar tissue. “If both parents have a problem with alcohol abuse, this can have a compounding effect on male offspring, making them even more likely to develop liver disease,” explained Michael Goldingauthor of the study.
“The general health of both parents before pregnancy is essential for the health of the offspring”
In the conclusions, the scientists emphasize that chronic alcohol consumption by parents leads to lasting mitochondrial dysfunction in offspring. “Preconception parental health—that is, the overall health of both parents before pregnancy—is critical to the health of the offspring. The more you, as a parent-to-be, work to adopt a healthy mindset and lifestyle, the more significant the impact you will have on your child’s health, both from birth and into their 20s and 40s,” said the researcher.
