Birth Defects Higher Among Children with Older Fathers

Birth Defects Higher Among Children with Older Fathers

Older men have an increased risk of having a child with abnormalities, new research suggests.

The common belief is that there is no age limit for men when it comes to fathering a child. Unlike women who undergo menopause, men do not have a fixed “andropause”. However, this view is being challenged as new evidence shows that the rates of birth defects such as achondroplasia (short stature) and autism is higher among children with older fathers.

A recent study carried out at a large Israeli army database found that children of men over 40 were 5.75 times more likely to have an autism disorder than those who had fathers under 30. Another Israeli study suggested that the risk of schizophrenia in children is almost double if the father is in his late 40s.

Prof Sheena Lewis, a consultant in reproductive medicine at Queen's University Belfast, said that as men get older their sperm DNA becomes more fragmented. By the time a man is 50, the cells that create a man’s sperm have replicated up to 800 times, creating many possibilities for error.

According to Prof Lewis:

The impact of the father smoking is even worse than the mother smoking (you can't repair damage caused in sperm DNA)
Viagra can affect fertility by causing the sperm to travel too fast
Cannabis us slows sperm function, resulting in a reduction in fertility
She also warns about the damaging impact of modern lifestyle and environmental factors.




Posted Monday 25th June 2007

Epidemiological Studies Find Older Paternal Age and Autism Linked

Several studies13, 34-39 of clinical samples have reported advanced paternal age in individuals with autism or childhood psychosis. The results of this review show that 3 of the 4 population-based studies28-29,32 to examine paternal age reported a significant association with risk of autism and ASDs. The fourth study31 also found that paternal age was older in fathers of case patients with autism compared with fathers of controls, although this relationship was statistically weaker in the adjusted analysis. Thus, advancing paternal age is consistently associated with increased risk of autism and ASDs.
Advanced paternal age has been associated with several congenital disorders, including Apert syndrome,40 craniosynostosis,41 situs inversus,42 syndactyly,43 cleft lip and/or palate,44-45 hydrocephalus,44 neural tube defects,46 and Down syndrome.47 In addition, advanced paternal age has been associated with schizophrenia15 and decreased intellectual capacities in the offspring.48 The most widely proposed mechanism underlying these congenital anomalies is known as the "copy error" hypothesis, first proposed by Penrose.49 After puberty, spermatocytes divide every 16 days, and by the age of 35 years, approximately 540 cell divisions have occurred. As a result, de novo genetic mutations that result from replication errors and defective DNA repair mechanisms are believed to propagate in successive clones of spermatocytes. These mutations accumulate with advancing paternal age and thus help explain how this disorder, which has a large genetic component, can be maintained in the population despite reduced reproduction in affected individuals.