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Smoking Mothers May Alter the DNA of Their Children
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Pregnant women who smoke don't just harm the health of their baby—they may actually impair their child's DNA, according to new research. A genetic analysis shows that the children of mothers who smoke harbor far more chemical modifications of their genome — known as epigenetic changes — than kids of non-smoking mothers. Many of these are on genes tied to addiction and fetal development. The finding may explain why the children of smokers continue to suffer health complications later in life.
What about smokers who abstain from smoking during pregnancy but otherwise chain smoke through life?
Perhaps there are people dumb enough to smoke while pregnant, but the alterations make their offspring less dumb. This is just a possibility. 'Alter' does not necessarily mean bad.
Probably why they are Mothers in the first place.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Epigenetics also affected people in the Dutch famine of 1944 (paper, http link to paper). The children of mothers that were in the famine were smaller than average, and those children, too.
ON smokers, and the industry that keeps paying money to prevent their cancer causing products to be regulated by the FDA so they can keep the chemicals they use under wraps.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Diabetes.
Obesity.
Starvation.
These all result in epigenetic changes to the DNA of a fetus.
What's REALLY interesting/scary is that these changes themselves can be inherited.
One of the best groups that has been followed and studied are survivors of starvation in the ghettos of WWII, polish ghetos IIRC.
We've seen that children who were born to mothers who were actively starving during pregnancy, are more prone to the "thrifty" phenotype, more prone to abnormal weight gain and obesity, than those who's gestation was before or after. Analysis of their genes has shown they had changes in the methylation of certain key genes compared to their parents or peers, altering their expression. In other words, the cells of the developing fetus adapted to the stress they were exposed to, resulting in LIFE LONG ALTERATIONS in the EXPRESSION of their DNA. The DNA itself, DID NOT CHANGE, yet they had different expressions of those same genes, for the rest of their life!
Crazy, right? Well, wait for this next bit, it'll really bake your noodle.
The GRANDCHILDREN of those women who were starving while pregnant *inherited* the changes to their parent's DNA (male AND female parents!), even if their mother did not undergo the same stress that their grandmothers did. The altered phenotype they express may be less severe then that of their parent, but they maintain those altered methylation patterns.
Another way we are finding this is children of women who are obese and/or hyperglycemic (gestational diabetes or poor diabetes control) are more prone to obesity or type 2 diabetes themselves, independent of post-gestational life. And if their mothers happen to have a gastric bypass and lose significant weight, then have another pregnancy? The children conceived after the weight loss seem to be no more likely to have weight issues or diabetes than children of non-obese women.
On the one hand, this is exciting, because a whole new field of study is blossoming as we watch!
On the other hand, even if we get the current obesity epidemic under control, or even reverse it, we're going to be feeling the effects for, literally, generations. Sins of the parents, indeed...
(PS: And, no, I don't mean that to mean the children are being divinely punished for their parents acts. Give me a break, poetic license in a crappy situation.)
They are one of those few groups who shouldn't get any healthcare at all. Even when their problem is seemingly unrelated to smoking.
same as car and motorcycle drivers, factory workers and owners, smartphone and computer users, meat and processed food consumers, etc., right?
Title got my attention and worried me a little bit.
So do you need to smoke the mother before or after she's given birth to alter her childrens' DNA?
@Whee
steaming, sauteing, or even poaching will keep them plump & juicy
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
But being a man, I was always smart about which cigarettes I bought. I never bought the ones that caused cancer and all that other scary shit. I only smoked the ones that caused low birth weight and pregnancy complications. I figured since I would never be pregnant, those were the ones to go with. I could never figure out why the brands would keep switching though. ;-)
If you've in an area of the world where they grow tobacco people smoke, third world or not. Same way third world countries with poppies often have some level of opium problems. Drugs are cheap if you can produce them yourself.
what does this mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I've been a smoker for a little over ten years. I've been paying into health insurance plans for roughly twenty. I haven't been to a doctor in seventeen years (and that was required for a tetanus shot so I could attend a public university), so I've paid my fucking dues.
There is a bit of a conumdrum here. As a smoker, you are supposed to die young, and suddenly from a massive heart attack or stroke. Stick with me here, I wish you good health.
Okay, so lets see what happens, the fate of the evil smoker, as compared to "healthy" people. I've told this story before, but here goes again. My mother in law who was a strict teetotaler, a non smoking person who did everything the healthy way, including drugs that kept all the "danger" readings in line, spent the last ten years of her life as a dementia patient, really hitting the Medicare trough. The last two years of her life ,which is when most healthy people really start racking up the bills, she cost around 600 thousand dollars in hospital bills. Pretty impressive.
Now let us take the example of my mother. She smoked, and on weekends, we'd enjoy a few beers. She did die of a massive heart attack, and it was over essentially immediately. So even though this is a sample of two, who cost the system more? My Mother in law, who was probably well over a million dollars during her dementia riddled last ten years, or my Mother who lived healthy up to the end of her days, then went out not costing that asshole anything (and she did die several years older than my mother in law anyway.
Smug people and their ideas on health care are probably the same people that buy high and sell low on the stock market. Using their logic, you would think they would encourage people to smoke. Nope, I've often thought that you could just exchange "smoker" with say the N-word, and see what they got. Just hate.
But we all do die, regardless of wht way too many people think.. I hope I go out the way my mother did, and my worst nightmare is my smart mother in law's protracted death.
I wish your mother hadn't been provided healthcare.
Much better if she was provided free birth control, don't you think?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
^ There we have it ladies and gentlemen. This is the logical consequence of socialised healthcare.
Anonymous Coward would rather we all die lying in our own urine at an arthritic 96 after having spent 40 years of pension contributions, than in our mid-60's from a smoking related disease. He's willing to pay for the former, but not the latter!
Muff Divers are at higher risk of throat cancer. Ban Muff Diving, yes.
they already do.
Everything above is my opinion....YMMV