Smoking during adolescence can harm future children
Boys who smoke in adolescence risk damaging the genes of their future children, increasing their chances of developing asthma, obesity and lung dysfunction, an international team of researchers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and other countries has concluded. The scientists published their findings in an article in the journal Clinical Epigenetics.
The experts analyzed the epigenetic profiles of 875 people aged 7 to 50 years, and also studied the smoking data of their fathers.
They found epigenetic changes at 19 sites mapped to 14 genes in children whose fathers smoked before the age of 15. These changes in the way DNA is packaged in cells (methylation) regulate gene expression by turning genes on and off, and are associated with an increased risk of asthma, obesity and wheezing in the lungs.
"Changes in epigenetic markers were much more pronounced in children whose fathers started smoking during puberty than in kids whose fathers started smoking at any time before conception," said study co-author Dr. Neguss Kitaba. - Early puberty may represent a critical period of physiological change in boys. This is when the stem cells that will produce sperm cells for the rest of their lives are laid down."
The number of young people smoking tobacco has declined in recent years, the paper's authors note, but scientists are concerned that teens are becoming increasingly addicted to vapes.
"Some animal studies suggest that nicotine may be the substance in cigarette smoke that causes epigenetic changes in offspring," explains Professor John Holloway. - 'It is therefore deeply worrying that adolescents today, particularly male adolescents, are being exposed to very high levels of nicotine through vaping'.
Evidence of the habit's harm to future children came from people whose fathers smoked in the 1960s and 1970s, when tobacco use was much more common. The study authors aren't sure if smoking e-cigarettes will have the same effect.
"Nevertheless, we shouldn't wait a couple generations to prove the impact that vaping can have among adolescents. We need to act now," Holloway says.