Boys Who Smoke Could Be Harming Their Future Children's Health
U.S. News & World Report By Cara Murez HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Sept. 5, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Smoking may not only harm the smoker and those who breathe in the secondhand fumes, but also their future children.
New research suggests that boys who smoke in their early teens risk passing on harmful genetic traits to future children. The study probed the genetic profiles of 875 people between 7 and 50 years of age and their father's smoking behavior.
People whose dads were early-teen smokers had gene markers associated with asthma, obesity and low lung function. Biomarkers associated with this were different from those associated with maternal or personal smoking, the researchers found.
America's 25 Healthiest Communities
View All 29 Slides
This is the first human study to reveal the biological mechanism behind the impact of fathers early smoking on their children, according to researchers from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and the University of Bergen in Norway.
Changes in epigenetic markers were much more pronounced in children whose fathers started smoking during puberty than those whose fathers had started smoking at any time before conception, said study co-author Negusse Kitaba, a research fellow at the University of Southampton.
